Red Earth

Winter Park, Florida | Film Feature

Sci-Fi, Experimental

Georg Koszulinski

1 Campaigns | Florida, United States

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This campaign raised $5,260 for post-production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.

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Red Earth is an experimental sci-fi feature that imagines a world in the late Anthropocene, where large parts of the planet have become inhospitable to life. It is a portrait of our possible future, a parable meant to give voice to the anxieties many are feeling today.

About The Project

  • The Story
  • Wishlist
  • Updates
  • The Team
  • Community

Mission Statement

Red Earth uses a sci-fi framework to critically engage the legacies of industrialization, environmental devastation, and colonization. We’re living through the 6th mass extinction event, a multispecies crisis with no previous analogy in Earth's history. Now is the time to act on these issues.

The Story

THE STORY

What comes after the Anthropocene?


Earth Year 2492: 

The Martian Colonization Project has sent thousands of scientists to begin the first phase of resource extraction on the red planet. Earth’s life systems have reached a point of no return, the governments of the world have fallen, and the mass extinction event continues unabated. Many believe Mars to be humanity’s last chance at survival, though its future remains firmly in the hands of the multinational elites.

Chief scientist Ursus Harriot leaves her family on Earth, hoping to gain them safe passage to Mars. Seven years later, her daughter Kasei arrives on Mars, among the last colonists to arrive from Earth before the outbreak of the Martian-Terran War.

After more than a decade of interplanetary conflict, the Martian revolutionaries face certain death. In desperation, they propel Mars’ moon Deimos at Earth, destroying all remaining life on the planet. A generation later, a team of scientists is sent back to Earth, with hopes of finding signs of life on the scorched planet… among them, Kasei’s son, Thomas Harriot.

PROJECT HISTORY

Production on Red Earth began in the spring of 2021, with principal photography completed in Los Angeles and the deserts of the American southwest. Production funds were successfully raised through granting organizations and principal photography was completed in June of 2022. We now have a 60-minute fine cut of the film. We’re seeking finishing funds to complete the final phase of the project and successfully release it on the festival circuit.

 

Red Earth's influences span nearly a century of film and literary history, from classic genre examples including Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes (1968), and Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99 (1992) to numerous literary works by Octavia Butler, J.G. Ballard, and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Red Earth leans into lo-fi sci-fi and realism. This speculative science fiction project is grounded in a factual account of the history of rocketry and subsequent space exploration, as well as the real multispecies peril human societies are creating on Earth right now. Red Earth is a portrait of a possible future on this planet, one where Earth is no longer hospitable to human life.

The concept of the Anthropocene (a proposed geological epoch, dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's climate and environment) allows us to take measure of our current crisis, to understand the present within the context of deep time, and to make sense of our current collective actions. Human industrial activities have hijacked Earth systems, and this disruption will leave evidence of itself in the geologic record, which requires a new epoch to mark the distinction. The Anthropocene becomes an essential tool for understanding what is happening to us, and to Earth systems. Red Earth explores what new era could come next.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

During the summer of 2020, it was the unlikely connection between two critical events that compelled me to write Red Earth. The week George Floyd was murdered, two astronauts were sent into space by a private corporation. I wondered how human societies might remember these two events 500 years from now.

I started researching the history of space exploration and learned the first serious plans to colonize Mars were written by Nazi rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, who later became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle.

I also learned that when NASA built the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, they sprayed massive amounts of DDT in the region, rendering the dusky seaside sparrow extinct. I couldn’t stop thinking about this horrific paradox—that to explore other worlds, industrialized societies were destroying our own. In Red Earth’s world, this historical reality is known as the Dusky Seaside Sparrow Paradox, and it meant that in order to colonize Mars, Earth had to be driven into further ruin.

The social-political-ecological connections between these events are many, and too complex to address in a short statement. Suffice to say, Red Earth may be a work of speculative fiction, but it is a direct response to historical realities, and an invitation for audiences to imagine alternative historical trajectories.

 

Shooting a movie is half the battle. Finishing it and getting it out into the world can be just as difficult, and just as expensive. With production successfully funded and complete, and our fine cut in hand, we now need your help to finish Red Earth and get it out on the international film festival circuit.

Our goal is to raise $5,000 to finish our edit, sound, and color grading; to submit the film at international film festivals; and to financially compensate our creative team.

STRETCH GOAL: $7,500

The story continues. The Red Earth team is already at work on our next collaboration, a second co-production between Substream Films and Lunar Kitchen Films. All additional funds raised beyond $5,000 will provide seed money for Green House, a sister feature film to Red Earth, set in a military installation in Iceland during humanity's final days. Green House is currently in development, with a working script and a partial cast. It's slated for production in 2023.

 

Kate E. Hinshaw and Georg Koszulinski

Our creative brain trust combines decades of experience in experimental, documentary, and narrative filmmaking. Writer/Director/Producer Georg Koszulinski, Producer Tiffany Albright, Associate Producer JC Farris, and Cinematographer/Associate Producer Kate E. Hinshaw have collectively screened their work at hundreds of international film festivals, won numerous juried awards, and licensed their work across a multitude of platforms. 

But in our hearts we’re a scrappy band of DIY filmmakers who've never met a problem we couldn't solve. Like the Martian revolutionists, we're committed to the mission, and will use all the tools at our disposal to achieve success by any means necessary. Learn more about us on the Team page.

 

Red Earth has been a labor of love over the past two years, and we're so proud of the film we've created. With your support, we'll finish editing, sound design, and color correction by August and begin submitting to film festivals for a premiere in late 2022 or early 2023. We'll also be seeking distribution for the finished feature in 2023. We'll keep you updated on the journey right here! Join us by taking any of these actions:

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Spread the word. Share this campaign with other lovers of sci-fi and experimental film, ecological dystopias, or strong female leads. Help us reach beyond our networks and find an audience for this film!

 

We've made it easy with some sample examples - free free to copy-paste:

 

Help filmmaker Georg Koszulinski and team by supporting their experimental sci-fi feature RED EARTH about three generations of Martians dealing with the fallout from ecological disaster and interplanetary war. Join them on @seedandspark: tinyurl.com/redearthss

I just watched the trailer for RED EARTH, directed by filmmaker Georg Koszulinski. You've got to check out this experimental sci-fi feature on @seedandspark: tinyurl.com/redearthss

I'm so excited to see the sci-fi feature RED EARTH, by writer/director Georg Koszulinski, UNCW professor Kate E. Hinshaw, and UNCW alum Tiffany Albright. Go Seahawks! Support them on @seedandspark: tinyurl.com/redearthss

I'm so excited to see the sci-fi feature RED EARTH, by director/writer Georg Koszulinski and Stowe Story Labs Producing Lab alums Tiffany Albright and JC Farris. Support them on @seedandspark: tinyurl.com/redearthss

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About This Team

Georg Koszulinski has been making films and videos since 1999. His recent work engages issues of the Anthropocene and merges his interests in science, poetry, and radical forms of non-fiction filmmaking. His award-winning works have been presented at hundreds of film festivals around the world. His feature documentaries, White Ravens: A Legacy of Resistance and America is Waiting are available through Docurama. Fandor distributes his Florida Trilogy (2007-14) and his experimental film essay series, Frontier Journals #1-8 (2013-15). His work has also appeared on the Documentary Channel, Docurama, Proquest, GuideDoc, Streampix/Xfinity, and the Journal of Short Film. More work: vimeo.com/koszulinski

 

Tiffany Albright is a producer, writer, and direcror based in Greensboro, NC. Her work centers women and queer stories, and explores identity, gender, sexuality, and class in genre film. She's been a participant in the inaugural Stowe Story Labs Producers Lab and a quarterfinalist for the Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. She is a producer of the sci-fi feature Nemesis Eterna with award-winning director Stephen van Vuuren, now in post-production. Her short narrative and documentary films have screened at dozens of festivals around the US, including River Run Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Indie Grits, Cucalorus, and more. tiffany-albright.com

 

JC Farris is the producer, writer, and/or director of over 20 short films and web series episodes. Her short film WE HATE BOB was in over a dozen film festivals winning 2 Audience Choice awards, a Best Writer and Best Director award. She also produced the feature film GHOSTWRITER which premiered at Dances with Films. Her short film TAKE A BREATH will take part in the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival, premiering on Shudder in August. JC has worked on several productions, at arts organizations, and festivals. She took part in the Stowe Story Producers Lab and the Chicago Independent Producers Lab, is a company member of the non-profit Soft Cage Films, a reader for screenplay competitions, and a screener for film festivals. Her interest lies in horror, sci-fi, and thriller genres with strong social themes. jcfarrisfilm.com

 

Kate E. Hinshaw is a tactile filmmaker and cinematographer who works with digital and film cameras alike. Coming from an experimental background, she is interested in using the cinematic gaze to render visible the interiority of the feminine. Her work has screened at SXSW, Maryland Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, and Indie Grits. She was the recipient of the 2020 Vanishing Angle Post Production Grant, and 2021 Southern Documentary Fund Filmmaker award for excellence in southern storytelling. She publishes and curates Analog Cookbook - a film zine that celebrates and shares knowledge of analog filmmaking, darkroom process, and features artists from all over the world. She currently resides in Wilmington, NC where she is Assistant Professor of Cinematography at UNCW. katehinshaw.com

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