Life before the Apocalypse at 51˚ North

‘This is a very different kind of disaster movie. No Bruce Willis here, to save life on Earth from extinction. This is a movie to change perspectives – and now that we realise the high probability of such a strike from space, it is a timely warning indeed.’ (Dr. Brian May, Composer, 2014)

51 Degrees North is not your typical movie about the end of the world (via asteroid). The story follows filmmaker Damon Miller through his daily struggles which become trivial when confronted with the approach of an asteroid. His task is to catalogue the End of the World through a London perspective by using his DSLR camera as a witness.

The film premiered at the recent Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands with celebrity guests Dr. Brian May (who is also a Sentinel Mission Strategic Advisor) and Dr. Stephen Hawking in attendance. The film will open in 2015 in select theaters.

We’re thrilled to have this Q&A with the film’s writer, director and producer Grigorij Richters.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became the director and producer for 51 Degrees North:

I began my career in front of the camera as a child model in Germany. By the age of six I was obsessed with cameras and began making my own films on a JVC Hi-8 camcorder. I made a documentary on Franz Kafka that I sold to a German university, and directed a 30 minute short film called Dean’s Life before the age of 16.

I completed my A Levels at film college Hurtwood House in the UK and went on to study under famed Czech-American director Milos Forman at FAMU Film School in Prague. Following a stint in New York City working as a freelance social media consultant for MTV, I moved back to the UK and was appointed the Kevin Spacey Filmmaker in Residence at the Old Vic Theatre in London.

In 2010 a friend sent me a BBC Horizon documentary called “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” about asteroids and the threats posed by them. After watching the documentary I was shocked. I jumped onto Google and tried to find out a little more about the topic and what we are currently doing about this threat.

When I concluded that there isn’t much happening in this field due to the lack of financial motivation I felt responsible to a degree. I felt like it was my mission to make a change. I contacted a few of the experts who appeared in the documentary, one of them being Prof David Jewitt, who became an extremely important advisor to the project. Over the next few months we constructed a fictitious story around the topic and began filming six months later.

Why an asteroid disaster film? Why now?

Well… I don’t consider it a disaster movie. The film is about Damon Miller, a filmmaker who is tasked to capture the last moments of life on Earth before it collides with an asteroid. It’s a cross genre film with factual elements and real experts throughout but dramatised to have more of an impact on the audience. It is narrated by Damon’s son, in the future, who has created the film as a tribute to his father.

I am not sure about the timing. It really just happened. The timing wasn’t actually the best when we started. I began writing the script in 2010 before Chelyabinsk and before Rosetta got all this attention. But now it seems perfect, as if things were supposed to happen this way. It’s a very exciting time to be releasing the film, maybe the perfect time.

What other films were inspiring to you when you were planning and producing your film?: Good question. There wasn’t a particular film in that genre, dealing with this topic, that had much of an impact on me. I have to go back to the films I watch over and over such as “Apocalypse Now” and many of Stanley Kubrick’s films.

I really just wanted to tell Damon Miller’s story and how he was dealing with the knowledge of imminent death of all he knew and loved. We were pretty extreme in making every element absolutely perfect so I guess Kubrick was always in the back of my mind.

What is your opinion on the asteroid film genre in general. Any favorites? Guilty pleasures?

Well there aren’t that many films in this genre which got much attention. I do like watching “Armageddon” – it’s so absurd and fun to see how Bruce Willis saves humanity. I wish it were that easy.

Having Brian May create the soundtrack for your film must have been thrilling. Tell us how you got him involved on the project and what it was like to work with him.

Yes absolutely! Many things that have happened while making the film were totally unexpected and have worked out incredibly well. When we began shooting many of my filmmaking colleagues said that the film would never work because people didn’t even know what a meteorite looks like; then Chelyabinsk happened.

Moritz von Zeddelmann (who plays Damon Miller) was quite the Queen fan and always woke me and the rest of the Crew up to their music. After doing an interview with Richard Crowther from the UK Space Agency, he mentioned that we should contact Dr. Brian May, who was not just a brilliant musician but also a well respected astrophysicist. I got in contact with him and here we are now, a year later, having the music composed by a rock legend who also happens to be an Astrophysicist and an incredible human being.

What do you hope people will walk away with after seeing the film?

As an artist who has spent so much time making this film I wish everyone loves it but sadly I can’t control that. What I do hope is that anyone who watches the film, no matter how much they like it, goes away with a changed perspective. I want people to wake up and realise that no one (apart from a handful of people like yourselves) really cares or even knows much about asteroids and the threats they pose.

There is currently very little funding for asteroid research or to launch a detection programme. Humanity currently faces (and causes) so many problems which are very complex, such as finding a cure for cancer, predicting natural disasters (such as earthquakes and climate change) so wouldn’t it be ironic that Earth eventually gets destroyed by a simple rock from space? A problem which can literally be solved by throwing enough money and expertise at it!

Shouldn’t we protect Earth first and then explore other planets? At least all the other problems would go away if an asteroid were to collide with us. But do we really want to be remembered as the species which held all the tools and just let it happen? So I do hope that people go away from the film inspired to do their own research and realise that it’s everyone’s responsibility as a species to prevent asteroid collision and that without a global detection and deflection programme we will be lost… eventually.

As of this interview, you’re premiering the film at Starmus now. Tell us a bit about the festival.

The festival was founded by astrophysicist Garik Israelian in 2011. It is the only festival in the world which brings together rock legends such as Brian May and Rick Wakeman, scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, and astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Alexei Leonov.

We had the great honor to be this year’s headline film. It was the first full length preview of the film. Our world premiere will be taking place in London early next year. We couldn’t have asked for better feedback. It was very important to us that the film would be shown to a scientific community so we get a chance to get all the facts as accurate as possible before releasing it to the public next year (2015).

Where can people watch the film and what are your plans for distribution?

Our world premiere will be in London and we will be releasing the film to theatres across the UK early next year. We are currently in talks to distribute the film in the US and will definitely aim for a worldwide theatrical release of the film.

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All images and media courtesy of Films United.

Please visit the film’s official website: http://www.51degreesmovie.com/