What Is Hardkor 44?

By Paige MacGregor

Last month, an announcement was made that work had begun on a feature film about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944--a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate the Polish capital from Nazi occupation. The film is a collaboration that involves Polish artist and animator Tomek Baginski, best known for his Oscar-nominated short film Cathedral, and the Polish film studio Platige Image, on behalf of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Hardkor 44 will be the debut film for the Platige Image, and is described as a “sci-fi reimagining of the events of the Warsaw Uprising” that will have "steampunk overtones."

Unfortunately, the news about Polish film Hardkor 44 didn’t garner much attention in the U.S.; but now that promotional images of characters have hit the Internet, Hardkor 44 is catching people’s attention—and with good reason. Hardkor 44 utilizes the film techniques developed by Zack Snyder and Frank Miller in the making of 300 (2006) and Sin City (2005). Like Snyder and Miller’s films, Hardkor 44 will star live-action actors with backgrounds created using computer-generated imagery. Based on the promotional images released for the film to date, it looks like the live actors will be stylized using CGI, similar to the way the actors and actresses were transformed in Robert Zemeckis' 2007 film Beowulf.

All of the press materials currently available for Hardkor 44 are written in Polish, but from what I can gather, the insurgents in the film are courageous, beautiful, well-armed young girls reminiscent of American comic book heroes. The Germans, on the other hand, are perverse cyborg monsters and robots—all of which look extremely cool and terrifying.

Obviously, the Nazi soldiers who fought at Warsaw in 1944 were not cyborgs or robots (although many would agree that they could be described as monsters), and it’s debatable whether a force of beautiful young women resisted the Germans’ attacks for over two months, but Hardkor 44 promises to be entertaining and visually stunning nonetheless.

The official website for Hardkor 44 is live and downloads are available for press kits, however you’ll need to use a translation service to get anything out of the documents and text on the site. Hopefully as the project gains momentum, international attention information will be made available in English (or any other language that you might desire), but until then it’s still cool to visit the site and see some of the images they have posted.

Iron Sky Footage: Nazis in Space!!

By Paige MacGregor

First there were Nazis. Then, there were zombie Nazis. Now, thanks to director Timo Vuorensola and writers Antti Hukkanen and Jarmo Puskala, we have Nazis invading the next logical film frontier: Space.

Vuorensola’s film is titled Iron Sky, and according to the plot synopsis on the movie’s official website, it concerns a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity which the Nazis made towards the end of World War II. In this piece of alternate history, they began launching spaceships from a secret base in the Antarctic in late 1945. The ships’ mission was to found a military base known as Schwarze Sonne, or Black Sun, on the dark side of the moon. The inhabitants were tasked with building a powerful invasion fleet and returning to Earth to take over the planet. Now it is 2018, decades after the countries of the world wiped out the last of the Nazi party (or so they thought), and the Nazi invasion is underway. Earth is in for a very rude awakening.

The first footage from the film was released this week, and contrary to my expectations and much to my delight, it looks really good. While the storyline grabbed me right off the bat due to my inexplicable fascination with Nazis (Død Snøw being one of my favorite horror films), the special effects featured in the trailer are really impressive for a film not backed by a major motion picture studio. The cast includes accomplished German TV and movie stars such as Udo Kier, Julia Dietze, Götz Otto and Tilo Prückner.

Iron Sky is set for release in Finland in January 2011, but the film’s website has a feature that allows visitors to enter their location and request that Iron Sky be released in their country/area. The site also offers various other ways for visitors to help promote the film, including ordering an Iron Sky Support Kit. Fans can also join the Iron Sky community and follow the film via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.