Zenith (film)

Last updated
Zenith
Zenith film promo poster.jpg
Promotional poster
Directed by Vladan Nikolic
Screenplay by Vladan Nikolic
Story by Vladan Nikolic
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyVladimir Subotic
Edited byMilica Zec
Music byLuigi Colarullo
Release date
  • October 1, 2010 (2010-10-01)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Zenith (also styled as Zenith - A Film by Anonymous ) is a 2010 American psychological thriller directed by Vladan Nikolic and starring Peter Scanavino, Jason Robards III, and Ana Asensio. The screenplay concerns two men attempting to solve the same conspiracy theory. The title refers to a grand 'Zenith Conspiracy' formed by the film's protagonist, Ed Crowley. The film also utilizes an alternate reality game and transmedia storytelling to augment its narrative. [1] [2]

Contents

Zenith premiered at The IFC Center in New York City on October 1, 2010, and had an extended run in January 2011 at the Kraine Theatre with its distribution company, Cinema Purgatorio. [3] All three parts have been made available as a free-to-share download at the BitTorrent powered distribution site VODO.[ citation needed ]

Plot

In the post-apocalyptic year 2044, the population has been genetically altered to live in a constant state of happiness, but without sorrow, happiness dissipates, leaving only a feeling of never-ending paresthesia. Only pain can make people feel alive.

Jack (Peter Scanavino), a young man and former neurosurgeon, is a peddler of substances that induce pain. A stranger knocks on Jack's door and hands him a single video tape that Jack's long lost father, Ed Alexander Crowley (Jason Robards III), left behind. It is the first in a series of 10 tapes in which Ed has documented his life and his pursuit of what he calls the “Grand Conspiracy,” a conspiracy that quite possibly could be the answer to what happened to Jack's world.

Inspired by his father's tape, Jack sets out on his own investigation. But in order to solve the whole puzzle, he must locate the remaining nine tapes. Jack begins to track down four more tapes, but the larger answer still eludes him.

Jack meets the provocative Lisa (Ana Asensio) in a strip club, and is struck by the fact that she is just as conflicted and lonely as he is. Through her, Jack encounters the possibility of real love. As Jack finds the remaining tapes, the lines between his interior and exterior world blur, leading him to question reality itself. Lisa and Jack decide to abandon the search for the tapes and leave the city.

Jack locates Ed's last tape, and is suddenly faced with the same choice his father had to make forty years ago: to surrender his soul, or to remain true to himself, no matter the consequences. Jack's reality becomes the same reality as the final tape.

Jack is revealed to be an institutionalized patient (named Ed Crowley) with both epilepsy and a brain tumor, taking part in a clinical research trial in 2012, scribbling notes about Zenith while being monitored by a camera in his cell, wondering if this isn't another part of the conspiracy.

Cast

Production

Zenith was written and directed by Vladan Nikolic.

BitTorrent promotion

On March 16, 2011, BitTorrent Inc. promoted an open licensed version (CC by-nc-nd) of the first section of the film [4] for two weeks with Vodo.net [5] and other torrent-based distribution partners. Users downloading BitTorrent client software are encouraged to download and share the first of three parts of the film during the software installation. On May 4, 2011, Part Two of the film was made available on Vodo. [6] The BitTorrent promotion and ARG transmedia campaign resulted in over a million downloads of the first section of the film. [7] [8] [9] [10]

Reception

Upon the film's limited release in theaters, reviews ranged from positive to mixed. In the Village Voice , Michael Atkinson noted, "A brooding science-fiction trip enjoyed largely as a monologue. Luckily, Nikolic's lust for paranoid desperation is powerful, and his way with actors is stunningly graceful." [11]

Joe Leydon praised the film in Variety: "Smoothly incorporating influences as diverse as Philip K. Dick and Terry Gilliam, Zenith commands attention and builds suspense by taking inventive detours through familiar territory." [12]

Maitland McDonagh wrote in Film Journal International that the film weaves together "dystopian visions of a desensitized, crumbling future a la Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard, in which ubiquitous techno-distractions, dispassionate sex and dependence on artificial sensation are gradually leaching the humanity from the human race." [13]

Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times commented, this "bewildering collision of noir narration and purple paranoia may be long on atmosphere but is woefully short on sense." [14]

Noel Murray of The A.V. Club gave the 90-minute film a C+, while calling it "an audacious, impressive feat of imagination, turning a few sets and characters into a generation-spanning look at a society where benevolence and malevolence are so finely interwoven that it’s hard to know what to fight against." Murray found that, in 90-minute film form, it "doesn’t fully work"; both the beginning and end of the film were "strong", but in between, the film seemed padded with "cheesy-looking sex and fight scenes, and with a doubling-back narrative structure" that was confusing, and looked like an "attempt to save money by reusing footage." [15]

Kevin Thomas wrote in the Los Angeles Times "Many of Nikolic's concerns and motifs are familiar yet their expression here is vivid and idiosyncratic, designed to intensify a highly contemporary concern about the loss of freedom and power of the individual to secret, manipulative cartels." [16]

Brett Michel in the Boston Herald gave the film a "B", and remarked, "persistent voiceover narration, a device that helps smooth over a lack of scene transitions — [is] one area that exposes the film’s budgetary limitations. Still, the use of dilapidated Brooklyn and Queens locations, creatively photographed by Vladimir Subotic, goes a ways toward selling a future not too far removed from ones en-visioned by Philip K. Dick or J.G. Ballard." [17]

Loren Smith of the Boston Globe noted "With its bleak fatalism, “Zenith’’ at times echoes futuristic thrillers such as “12 Monkeys’’ and “Children of Men.’’ The shoestring budget is often obvious, with one too many strobe-light sequences, and it is dispiriting that even a movie set in 2044 has a gold-hearted hooker as the hero’s object of desire. But “Zenith’’ boasts terrific photography by Vladimir Subotic and offers a few genuine surprises. Director Nikolic shouldn’t remain “anonymous’’ for long: He gets solid performances from all the actors and creates an atmosphere of mounting paranoia that’s grim and chilling." [18]

Related Research Articles

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

BitTorrent is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner.

An anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants.

Broadcatching is the downloading of digital content that has been made available over the Internet using RSS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BitComet</span> BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP client

BitComet is a cross-protocol BitTorrent, HTTP and FTP client written in C++ for Microsoft Windows and available in 52 different languages. Its first public release was version 0.28. The current BitComet logo has been used since version 0.50.

Protocol encryption (PE), message stream encryption (MSE) or protocol header encrypt (PHE) are related features of some peer-to-peer file-sharing clients, including BitTorrent clients. They attempt to enhance privacy and confidentiality. In addition, they attempt to make traffic harder to identify by third parties including internet service providers (ISPs). However, encryption will not protect one from DMCA notices from sharing not legal content, as one is still uploading material and the monitoring firms can merely connect to the swarm.

<i>All the Presidents Men</i> (film) 1976 film by Alan J. Pakula

All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political drama thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post.

Ashwin Navin is an Indian-American entrepreneur, who is the CEO and co-founder of Samba TV, a data and analytics service that measures television viewership using opt-in data from Internet-connected devices and set-top boxes. The company has been compared to more traditional TV measurement firms like Nielsen which rely on the people meter to gather viewership data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribler</span> Peer-to-peer filesharing software and protocol

Tribler is an open source decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oink's Pink Palace</span> Defunct BitTorrent tracker and music sharing community website

Oink's Pink Palace was a prominent BitTorrent tracker which operated from 2004 to 2007. Following a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the site was shut down on 23 October 2007, by British and Dutch police agencies. These music industry organisations described OiNK as an "online pirate pre-release music club", whereas former users described it as one of the world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. About a month before the shut-down, music magazine Blender elected OiNK's creator, British software engineer Alan Ellis, to their The Powergeek 25 — the Most Influential People in Online Music list. Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demonoid</span> BitTorrent website

Demonoid is a BitTorrent tracker and website founded in 2003 to facilitate file-sharing related discussion and provide a searchable index of torrent files. The site underwent intermittent periods of extended downtime in its history due to the occasional need to move the server, generally caused by cancellation of ISP service due to local political pressure.

<i>Echelon Conspiracy</i> 2009 film by Greg Marcks

Echelon Conspiracy is a 2009 American action thriller film directed by Greg Marcks, from a screenplay by Michael Nitsberg and Kevin Alyn Elders. It stars Shane West, Edward Burns, Ving Rhames, Jonathan Pryce, Tamara Feldman, and Martin Sheen.

Pioneer One is a 2010 American web series produced by Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith. It was funded purely through donations, and is the first series created for and released on BitTorrent networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladan Nikolic</span>

Vladan Nikolic is a Serbian independent film director, screenwriter and film producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EZTV</span> TV torrent distribution group

EZTV was a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.

μTorrent Proprietary adware BitTorrent client

μTorrent, or uTorrent is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamie King (producer)</span> British filmmaker, writer, and activist

Jamie King is a British filmmaker, writer, and activist, best known for directing Steal This Film, a documentary that observes intellectual property in favour of P2P filesharing. He is also the founder of VODO, an online crossmedia distribution project for film, games, books, and music. Ted Hope described King as one of the "great free thinkers of Indie film." He is currently host of the podcast STEAL THIS SHOW, produced in conjunction with TorrentFreak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPVanish</span>

IPVanish VPN is a VPN service based in the United States, with applications for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Fire TV. Manual configuration is available for ChromeOS, Windows Phone, Linux, and DD-WRT routers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YIFY</span> Peer-to-peer movies release group

YIFY Torrents or YTS is a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their small file size, which attracted many downloaders.

References

  1. ↑ Official Zenith Press Notes Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine . zeniththefilm.com.
  2. ↑ Tabitha (September 21, 2010). "Zenith and its "transmedia" approach to storytelling could very well become an Internet phenomenon". SoundsOnSight.org. Archived from the original on July 23, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Zenith – Cinema Purgatorio". Cinemapurgatorio.com. Archived from the original on 2011-04-03. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  4. ↑ "BitTorrent Ecosystem: Zenith Part One Takes the Spotlight (...)". BitTorrent Blog. Bittorrent.com. March 16, 2011.
  5. ↑ "Zenith (2011) — by Anonymous". VODO. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  6. ↑ "Zenith (2011) - a film by anonymous". May 4, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-05-22.
  7. ↑ "ZENITH: crowdfunded, BitTorrent science fiction thriller". Boing Boing. 2011-03-22. Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  8. ↑ "Daily Dose Pick: Zenith". Flavorwire. 2010-12-17. Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  9. ↑ Macaulay, Scott (4 May 2011). "Zenith Creator Vladan Nikolic | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  10. ↑ Kohn, Eric (18 January 2011). "Toolkit Case Study: The Transmedia Conspiracy of Vladan Nikolic's "Zenith"". Indiewire. Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  11. ↑ Atkinson, Michael (September 29, 2010). "Sci-Fi? Zenith Imagines a Future When No One is Happy in Brooklyn or Queens". Village Voice .
  12. ↑ Leydon, Joe (2011-01-19). "Review: 'Zenith'". Variety. Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  13. ↑ McDonagh, Maitland (May 27, 2016). "Film Journal International". Film Journal International.
  14. ↑ Catsoulis, Jeannette (January 18, 2011). "His Dad Left a Conspiracy; You're Invited to the Hunt". New York Times .
  15. ↑ Murray, Noel (January 20, 2011). "Zenith (review)". The A.V. Club.
  16. ↑ Thomas, Kevin (2011-02-04). "Movie review: 'Zenith'". Los Angeles Times. ISSN   0458-3035 . Retrieved 2016-05-27.
  17. ↑ Michel, Brett (January 28, 2011). "'Zenith' at top of its game". Boston Herald .
  18. ↑ King, Loren (January 28, 2011). "A futuristic thriller tied to a web of conspiracy". Boston Globe .

MG~enwiki

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.