Celik Kayalar, PhD, the director of our "Film Acting Program" at SFSDF wrote, directed and executive-produced the psychological thriller. The producers were Jeremiah Birnbaum, the Founder of Fog City Pictures, and Milena Grozeva-Levy, one of our Digital Filmmaking Faculty.
"Moonlight Sonata" is the story of a privileged San Francisco family, the difficult moral choices its members make and the consequences they have to face, told in the genre of a modern psychological thriller with surprising twists and turns along the way, all culminating in a cliff-hanger climax.
The production boasted a large and highly talented and accomplished cast and crew from San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Sam Chase was the master cinematographer on the set, visiting from New York. Cast members included distinguished Los Angeles actors M.J. Karmi and Irena A. Hoffman as the female-leads, and Sita Young, P. David Miller, Nate Reese and Ann-Marie Jolly featured in major supporting-roles.
The esteemed San Francisco actor & director Warren David Keith was cast as the male-lead who also teaches one of our "Advanced Film Acting" Classes at SFSDF. Two of our other Film Acting Faculty, Celia Shuman and Brian D. Scott also had supporting roles in the movie.
Twenty-two of our own Acting Students at SFSDF were among the cast members of “Moonlight Sonata” ( all speaking-parts ). Several of the 22 were major supporting-roles that took many days to shoot. Here are all their names, in no particular order:
Taren Howes, Edith Reiner, Maggie Grant, Kay Ewing, Aimee McCrary, Jinnifer Jacobs, Goldie Chan, Joan Laqui, Hueiyen Tsai, Ashley Allen, Katrina Gimenez, June Barnard, Sarah Leight, Daniel Will-Harris, Micci Toliver, Tony Williams, Marshell Harwell, Roy Hylton, Vincent Leddy, Brendan Sweeney, Nate Duncan and Johann Schiffer.
A few of our Acting Students had non-speaking parts: Chris Leidecker, Mauro Pivi, Michelle Grey, Dawn Green ( Eli Kramer: his scenes are still to be shot ). In the pickup scenes we plan to shoot soon, another four small roles will be cast among our own Acting Students, as well.
