Back-Up: White Pig - Teasery Teasers

Just over a year ago I first wrote about the upcoming Danish crime thriller "White Pig", an indie film about a racist murderer and the cops trying to track him down. The film now has a release date, 20th of June 2015, and a couple of more teasers to rally people up in preparation for its release next year.

"White Pig" is going to tackle one of the scariest parts of racism, the fact that you have no idea who might be a racist. Anyone could be one, couple that with the fact that almost no murder case ends with his close ones saying "I totally understand, he seems like that kind of person" and you really have something. As the tagline for second teaser clip says: "He could be your neighbour, your friend, your teacher, your partner..."

In this second clip, which I've chosen to share first because it's the shortest one, we see one of the main characters, Jens, brutally attack and probably kill what we assume is a completely innocent girl of a different ethnicity. The end shot of him serving buns and jam to a blonde, assumingly pure Danish woman, help establish Jens as a normal man. The friendly neighbour who is more than happy to take you into his home and serve you food. You can't know who will be the next horror.

In the longest clip, as seen above, we meet Mia, the police officer who is tasked to find and track down Jens. It seems as if in this clip they're not quite sure what the exact motives of Jens are, though his victim demographic is clear. Women who look foreign, particularly like they might be from the Middle-East or South Asia.

I can't say that I am completely sold on this film yet, even though I did back it on Indiegogo back in its day, but I am hopeful. Crime films are rarely not at least a little intriguing, and the Danes are known to produce some good crime. I think this film might tackle racism in a way many other films don't really dare, by connecting with Jens, making us understand him, feel for him. Not make us agree with him in any way, but make us uncomfortable by reminding us that there are "perfectly" normal people out there with "perfectly" good reasons as to why they hate anyone who is even a little bit different. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what this film brings to the table that other films of its genre doesn't.

If you want to you can still support it over at their website, though it's not the kind of backing you're used to these days. It's just a straight-up donation service through Paypal, though you will get a contributor listing on IMDb, if that's the kind of thing you might dream about.

I have to say though, one last thing, I'm not a fan of them saying that the film is "loosely based on the Anders Breivik massacre". Sure, the people coming up with the idea might have been inspired by the acknowledgment of these kind of people in the Nordic, but it doesn't have anything to do with the actual event. Although I haven't seen this description anywhere else, it does seem like it's meant to stir people up, give them a certain vibe, but to me it ends up just being in poor taste. Though that might be just me. I still think that there shouldn't be as many films about 9/11 as there has been, or any other great human tragedy that's happened recently. We don't need that kind of discussion right now in such a direct manner, the audience actually lived through it. Wait until a big portion of the audience hasn't.

Back-up: White Pig - Mmmm, Bacon

I've gotten more and more into Kickstarter and Indiegogo lately, probably mostly thanks to Iron Sky and its crowdfunding endeavors. There's something about seeing projects you like and give them your personal green light, and I know I'm far from the only one. Veronica Mars's campaign for a film tore Kickstarter's roof off, and Zach Braff's Wish I Was Here did tremendously well right after. It seems that right now we are at a state where everyone knows about crowdfunding, and a lot of us are actively contributing.

Right now projects for films are basically just pre-sales for DVDs and posters, you put in X amount of money and receive items that will later sell at X-1 amount of money. At the campaign they have to up the price, because the DVDs and posters are just perk. You're supposed to pay for the film to be made at all, and that's where the main problem lays. The project runners have to really think through their campaigns or everything can be ruined, it's more or less a full-time job just making sure the campaign runs smoothly and everyone gets what they need. The smaller guys who are doing it all on their own can end up burnt out before even starting to produce what the campaign promised. Even the bigger guys run into this, just look at the recent Double Fine Kickstarter, they got two and a half million dollars more than what they asked for, and they just didn't know what to do with the money. Now they're having to release half the game, sell that to the general public and use the profits off of that to deliver on the promises they made to their backers. It's no easy task.

This will be a new irregular series of blog posts to give you a break from my film reactions, where I show you various film projects in need of funding that to me look interesting and worthy of you contribution. I will put a disclaimer here right away, I may not personally back all of these projects financially (I'd end up broke quicker than the Flash can run to Sweden) but they will be projects that I do believe should be made. The first film on my list is a Danish project on Indiegogo called White Pig.

White Pig is coming from director David Noel Bourke who's previously directed No Right Turn which got critical acclaim both in its homeland Denmark and internationally. With White Pig he wants to tell the story of a racist murderer and the police woman who is trying to track him down. On the surface it seems like a really standard story, one that we've seen many times before, and that was my initial thought as well. But upon further inspection it seems like he's trying to do something different with this.

I've always believed that every story has been told, it's up to storytellers to tell them more interestingly and in a different way, and that really seems to be the case here. It seems like they are really trying to convey what racism really is. What it means and how it feels. It's not the generic "racism is bad, m'kay", they're taking a real racist, putting him through trials and want us to understand him. Remember now, understand and agree are two completely different things, I do not believe they're trying to promote racism as a good thing. They're trying to make us think about it again. I feel that in many places, at least here in Scandinavia, racism isn't much of a discussion topic anymore. Even though it happens all the time. Everyone wants to believe that everything is fine and that if you do not poke at your scab nothing bad will happen. Unlike a scab, however, racism isn't a thing that's just going to fall off when it's good and ready. We have to actively poke it, stir it and think about it. Action is a result of thinking, we cannot do anything about anything before we think about it.

The reason this film is on Indiegogo and didn't just go through "the normal channels" is more or less the reason everyone else is doing it, they want more creative control. They have already gone to studios with the films, and there has been interest, it's just that they want to cut out a lot of violence and language that will hurt the message it's trying to tell, it'd probably just end up like any other cop-murderer-chase film.


White Pig Movie MOOD TEASER from david noel bourke on Vimeo .
Even in the mood teaser seen above they start throwing around offensive words, words that I myself am uncomfortable saying, and really violent imagery. It just reinforces my thoughts that they're wanting to share what goes through such an extreme racist's mind.

Now here comes the part that's really great, and something I've seen rarely mentioned even in the aftermaths of big-time campaigns, White Pig has gotten an international distributor ready to sign on. Angel Scandinavia has agreed to distribute the film on what seems to be just one condition (at least what's made public) and that is that the Indiegogo campaign gets 60 backers. They are currently at 47 so that's just 13 more and there is a guaranteed international distribution. There will also be a local cinema release which's extent I'm uncertain of, probably contained to some cinemas in Copenhagen, Denmark. With this information the project managers are promising to complete the film no matter what, even if they do not hit their funding goal (on Indiegogo you don't have to hit the goal to receive funds).

So come one, come all, for just ten euros (roughly thirteen US dollars) you can get your own digital download of the film estimated to be distributed by April of 2014. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go throw some money at my screen and see what happens.

Indiegogo page
Facebook page
Director's twitter