Did watch VENGEANCE CAN WAIT at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, but since there’s only one film on Friday and one film last night, I will condense the two into one entry this weekend.

For now, would like to point your attention to SQUATTERTOWN, which I have talked about on the East Screen/West Screen podcast and on my Twitter. Mr. Sparmberg has sent out a press release, and I will now reprint it here, with his permission:

Press Release SQUATTERTOWN

October 12, 2010

Hong Kong 10.10.10 – The production crew of Hong Kong’s first Dim Sum Western web series started its elevated location scouting on the rooftops of Hong Kong for the highly anticipates shootout of SQUATTERTOWN.

Headed by trans-media filmmaker Marco Sparmberg and Digital Media Expert Juergen Hoehbarth SQUATTERTOWN is about to be a wild mixture of film genres, art forms and new media technology. Run as multimedia project with an open source character, SQUATTERTOWN is a sole crowdsourced and crowdfunded project which engages its audience and contributors right from the start. Since August the project is worldwide looking for funding on various internet based collaborative fundraising platforms like Indiegogo.

Within the past years of their professional work in Hong Kong, Marco Sparmberg and Juergen Hoebarth set up a very own concept of local crowdsourced independent film production and a so-called “reverse distribution model”. Touring and promoting their vision throughout the city as well as international new media arts festivals like this year’s Ars Electronica, both were able to raise extreme awareness of their recent project SQUATTERTOWN.

Currently the projects core crew is assembled with independent filmmakers and experts in film related fields from all around the globe, ranging from China, the US, Germany, Austria and Portugal. This diversity is even stronger within SQUATTERTOWN’s daily increasing follower base throughout all the projects internet channels.

The web series is designed as 5 episode release, during its first season, for mobile devices and internet platforms. Not only the way how SQUATTERTOWN approaches its audience is unique, but also the dramatic genre via a gripping apocalyptic story will be told. Merely conceived as so-called Dim Sum Westerns, basically a mixture of the visual aesthetics from Spaghetti Westerns and Hong Kong films during the 1980s, the series will draw a gritty fictional picture of a desperate future society.

Set within the unique rooftop squatter housing structures of Hong Kong, SQAUTTERTOWN will also tackle a severe local social issue: the gradual disappearance of a very own culture, hidden in the dark for decades. Due to Hong Kong’s rapid urban renewal process the series’ director Marco Sparmberg admits, “This phenomenon has to be dealt with by the most modern mass media tools available otherwise it will vanish even before we can communicate and translate it to a broad global audience.”

Hence, the project turned out to be a race against time as some locations are soon about to be demolished, others already no longer accessible. The team around Marco Sparmberg and Juergen Hoebarth are scouting for suitable locations till mid of November 2010, principal photography is scheduled for first week of December. Till the cameras roll SQUATTERTOWN’s fundraising campaigns on are still running. “We welcome every single piece of support. Even just telling a friend or writing a tweet is already bringing the project one step further!” says Juergen Hoebarth.

For more information and details on the project, tune in and subscribe to one of the projects various internet channels like Twitter or Facebook. And to take direct action in helping this ambitious and talented crew SHOOTING SOME DIM SUM contact donateadimsum@gmail.com

So spread the word and join a worthy cause!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.