Our director Johannes Grenzfurthner will give a talk at HOPE Conference in NYC in July 2012: How To Create A Feature Film About The Digital Age — And Why That’s Pretty Hard
Movies are exciting. Things crash and burn. Bolts and fists fly. There are bangs and kabooms. People go to the cinemas in order to experience new worlds. But cinema is about to lose its prime source of narrative, having so far tethered to physical action that can be filmed. Cinema needs tempo, needs speed. The “movement-image” (Gilles Deleuze) depends on physical action onto which the cameras can point. Yet in contrast, the real world of non-cinema is losing physical action day by day. It is a time of abstract, optically unpresentable processes in networks and data systems. This regress of visual displayability is rather daft. Cinema has lived well on it for more than a hundred years. It’s easy to create a feature film about a bank robbery, but that’s anachronistic. Some of the most important crimes exist as electronic money movements between international stock exchanges. Hollywood cinema on the other hand still hasn’t evolved beyond anything better than banal sequences straight out of an Errol Flynn movie. How can we accurately portray the stories of our (new) world? All those dramas and comedies? All those crimes and stories?
That’s why we at monochom are working on a feature film called SIERRA ZULU. Let me tell you about our challenges and hopes – and why we think you might be able to help us.
July 13, 2012; 9 PM (Room: Dennis, 18th floor of Hotel Pennsylvania, NYC).
Link / HOPE
That’s why you should not let Grenzfurthner draw a storyboard. But then again… it worked!
(Sierra Zulu’s prequel Earthmoving, last scene — pay attention to the gold colored marker he used)
There will be a German language presentation about Sierra Zulu in Amstetten.
Sierra Zulu. Oder: Wie ein belangloses Kuhkaff die Gegenwart retten kann
Eine UN-Friedenstruppe leistet in einem kleinen Lager Dienst im Niemandsland zwischen Europa und dem winzigen Kleinstaat Sowjet-Unterzögersdorf. Ihr Dienst ist langweilig und eintönig, doch als es zu einer Explosion in Sowjet-Unterzögersdorf kommt, wird das Team in eine bizarre Verschwörung aus Industriespionage und politischer Intrige verwickelt, die die Zukunft der Informationsgesellschaft nachhaltig verändern könnte. “Sierra Zulu” – eine politische Groteske.
Johannes Grenzfurthner erzählt über die Entwicklung des Spielfilms “Sierra Zulu”.
May 3, 2012 – 7 PM at Cafe Kuckuck in Amstetten, Lower Austria (as part of Kulturhof Amstetten).
Johannes Grenzfurthner wants to invite you to informal formalities!
Want to be part of Sierra Zulu or just learn more about what’s going on?
Are you located somewhere in or near London? Join the movement for a coffee!
London: Sunday, April 22, 12 noon thru 3 PM @ Department of Coffee and Social Affairs / 14-16 Leather Lane, London EC1N 7SU, United Kingdom / Facebook event
Futurezone’s Dan Taylor interviewed director Johannes Grenzfurthner on the production process and philosophy of Sierra Zulu.
Whether the residents of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf realize it or not, their small village is under scrutiny. With an explosion happening inside Soviet territory, the small group of UN peacekeeping soldiers stationed at its borders are about to be thrown into a conspiracy of industrial espionage, a media frenzy, and political intrigue.
Link (to full article)
Yes, we were location scouting in Unterzoegersdorf. The real one.
It’s time indeed!
Roland Gratzer and Johannes Grenzfurthner want to invite you to informal formalities!
Want to be part of Sierra Zulu or just learn more about what’s going on? You live in the Bay Area, Las Vegas or Los Angeles?
Join the movement for a drink!
San Francisco: March 11, 8 PM @ The Orbit Room / 1900 Market Street (between Laguna & Guerrero), San Francisco, CA 94102 / Facebook event
Las Vegas: March 14, 8 PM @ Insert Coin(s) Video Game Arcade Bar / 512 Fremont Street, Las Vegas, NV 89101 / Facebook event
Los Angeles: March 22, 8 PM @ Birds Cafe & Bar / 5925 Franklin Ave (Neighborhood: Hollywood), Los Angeles, CA 90028 / Facebook event
Location scout Sarah Strauss and director Johannes Grenzfurthner went on another day trip to check out a possible camp area for Sierra Zulu’s UNASZMOG.
They visited TÜPl Großmittel — one of the proving grounds of the Austrian Military. Pretty impressive nothingness.
On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole. It is usually performed in dark, smelly places.
Director Johannes Grenzfurthner and editor Tom De Roeck can tell you how dark and how smelly.
(Above: Tom De Cutter)
A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of word processing!
Evelyn Fürlinger, Roland Gratzer and Johannes Grenzfurthner finished script version 4.0! A milestone!
We are currently preparing for a major shoot in January 2012.
No, it’s not a shoot for Sierra Zulu. And yet, it is. We want to create a short film prequel of Sierra Zulu, to spread the word, tell the prestory, and to have material for possible partners.
The film will be called “Earthmoving.”
The Story?
Another day at the United Nations offices in Vienna. The Austrian Foreign Affairs Ministry invited members of the European Protocol Service, the UN Strategic Command Center for Central Europe, the United States Air Forces and a regional politician from Lower Austria to talk about the future of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. The tiny microstate, an enclave created after WWII, is surrounded by Lower Austrian farmland.
It escaped the ravages of time and is the last proud member of the grand Soviet Union. The border between Soviet Unterzoegersdorf and Europe is disputed, or — let’s phrase it more correctly — so unimportant, that no diplomats are willing to deal with it. But a citizens’ initiative started by land-owning farmers in the border region demands formal status for the Soviets. No official recognition is bad for business, especially lucrative subsidies…
We have a great cast (Jeff Ricketts, Lynsey Thurgar, Alexander Fennon, Adrienne Ferguson and Martin Auer) and a wonderful production team…
…and today we started to take still images of heavy equipment for composting work!
It was great that Johnny Dibon (who is working for Zeppelin-Cat Austria) made it possible to do the photo shooting — from the roof of their building.
(More images on Sierra Zulu’s Flickr page)
Johannes Grenzfurthner and Roland Gratzer at Sources 2 scriptwriting workshop (Cape East in Haparanda, Sweden).
Time to get Sierra Zulu V4.0 done!
(Image by Mikael Rutqvist, Filmpool Nord)
SOURCES 2 is a series of high-powered work units for scriptwriters and teams of writers and co-writers, directors or producers with a specific film project in development.
Sierra Zulu’s Roland Gratzer and Johannes Grenzfurthner will take part in the upcoming workshop in Haparanda (Northern Sweden). There is not a lot of daylight, but tons of time to discuss and refine some exciting scripts.
And there is a sauna.
Director Johannes Grenzfurthner gave a short presentation about traditional narrative cinema, the problems of storytelling and Sierra Zulu.
(Update: the talk was featured on Boing Boing, Laughing Squid and Pijamasurf)