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Eugene Efuni, multi-talented producer and movie maker Serhiy Zavalnyuk Moscow-born producer Eugene Efuni talks about his work in American and local showbiz, and reveals some ambitious plans

million things on his mind. The Moscow-born Efuni, a film producer and now also a music producer, spent the last few years of his life traveling between the U.S. (his current country of residence) and Ukraine, working on various creative projects, the latest of which is the Ukrainian girl band Unvasion, which Efuni manages in conjunction with two other producers based in Kyiv.

The man from Hollywood

It all started for Eugene Efuni when he came to the United States as a graduate of the biology department at Moscow State University.

“I came to the States to work at a hospital but almost immediately left it and took an interest in film making instead,” Efuni said.

With his new focus in mind, Efuni began taking film courses at New York University, and then took a course at the New York Film Academy, which turned into an unforgettable experience for him.

“They throw you into movie making the day after the course starts, without you knowing anything, and in two or three months you know everything about the process,” Efuni recalled.

Having completed his practical studies, Efuni shot his first feature film.

“It was very cheap and in fact it was a horrible film, but I did it on time, on budget and it looked good. So I started showing it around,” Efuni said.

As a result the movie fell into the hands of two people – the legendary producer and filmmaker Roger Corman, known as the “King of B-movies,” and Sergey Livnev, former director of the Horkoho film studio in Russia. Together they were just starting a new movie project, “Barbarian” and decided to hire Efuni as an associate producer for it. Efuni was incredibly enthusiastic to work with Corman.

“It was great to work with Roger Corman, who has made an incredible number of low-budget movies – not always good in an artistic sense but always profitable,” Efuni said.

Oddly enough, his first job as a Hollywood producer brought him to Ukraine.

“The movie was mostly shot in Crimea,” Efuni recalled with a smile.

Plunging into show-biz

In 2004, Eugene Efuni came to Ukraine looking for a high-quality but inexpensive animation facility that he needed to screen a story by a Kyiv-born writer. That’s the way he met Viktor Sleptsov, the general producer of the “Borisfen S” animation company and the “Ukrainian Animation Studio.” At the same time he also met another animation producer, Oleksandr Yatsulyak, and with them Efuni came up with an idea to create a new Ukrainian girls band.

“A year and a half ago I got involved in the music business in Los Angeles a little bit and I realized that the talent search is an extremely difficult and demanding job. On the other hand, in places like Ukraine it’s a completely untouched resource – if you just start looking throughout the country and you’ll find a great number of talented people who simply don’t have the chance to be discovered,” Efuni explained.

However, Efuni and his partners weren’t looking for just any talented girls – they were looking for singers who had some previous experience performing professionally. As a result, the trio of producers finally picked three girls, one of who also seemed to be talented at songwriting.

“Suddenly we discovered that we also had our own composer. And the songs she wrote didn’t sound exactly Eastern European – it was original, modern music,” Efuni said.

The idea of the name “Unvasion” was a combination of the words “invasion” and “Ukraine,” to symbolize the invasion of Ukrainian music into the international scene. According to Efuni, the group was meant to be targeted for both Ukrainian and Western markets from the start.

“Most performers from the CIS are easy to identify – the speed of their songs is too slow in comparison to Western music. That’s why we needed Joe Hogue, a recognized composer from the States, to arrange the songs in an American style. Besides, the girls perform very well in English – they have almost no accent at all,” Efuni said.

Though, while in Ukraine all this makes the band more original, in the West the girls don’t seem to have anything yet that makes them stand out. Efuni, however, claims there is.

“The fact that our soloist Masha is also a songwriter is a big plus. Besides, with the quality of music they’re making they can easily get a deal with a major recording company.”

As for the local market Efuni has no doubt the girls will make it big.

“All major record companies are interested in us. So first we’ll sign up with one of them – Universal, EMI or Sony BMG,” Efuni said.

Efuni also had another special promoting strategy for the girls.

“We plan to have a TV series about the creation of the first album. It would include episodes shot in Los Angeles, New York, Buenos Aires, Shanghai and, of course, Kyiv,” Efuni said.

While the TV project is still in the process of negotiation, Unvasion had their official debut performance at a party dedicated to the anniversary of the “Europa Plus” radio station, which will also have an exclusive right to be the first local station to play the band’s songs.

Ambitious plans

But movie making remains the major interest for the restless Efuni. Just a year ago, he completed his biggest fillm project so far – a 10-million-dollar co-production between Russia and the U.S., “Mirror Wars.” Though initially Efuni was to be an associate producer of the film, he also became a director of part of the movie.

“Our director couldn’t get a visa to get to London in time so suddenly I ended up directing those scenes, where my main star was an actor as great as Malcom McDowell,” Efuni recalled.

At the moment, however, Efuni is already planning on even bigger and more ambitious projects. One of them is a film with Quentin Tarantino and another is a TV project featuring American pop icon Britney Spears.

“The film we plan to do commonly with Tarantino is going to be a fantasy thriller based on a novel by the famous Ukrainian writing duo, Serhiy and Maryna Dyachenko. We already have full financing for it and we have prior arrangements with Tarantino, ” Efuni said.

As for the TV project, according to Efuni, it’s going to be a reality TV-format series modeled after famous talent-search shows, only this time the talent search will be conducted in Eastern Europe.

“Probably seven or eight episodes will be made in Ukraine between Kyiv and either the Karpaty region or Crimea, depending on the season. And Britney Spears herself will act as celebrity judge,” Efuni explained.

The final decision for both projects will be made next month. “It takes a lot of time and effort to actually have the project start – a lot of planning and negotiating,” Efuni said. “The main thing is to keep on working at it.”