An elderly man reflects on his life. He is a passenger aboard what looks like a luxurious private plane. At one point we see a stewardess give him oxygen, suggesting he’s not in the best of health. Through flashbacks we see how he has made his fortune.
We see grainy footage of him coming to America as a boy.
Next he recalls panning for gold in the Rocky Mountains, and we see him as a young man doing just that.
“I got lucky,” the old man relates.
The back and forth between the man of today and his past exploits continues as we see him strike it rich in Texas oil but regret the fact that he was never lucky in love.
We see him with different women at different times of his life
Finally we’re firmly back in the present, with no further flashbacks. The man explains that he has come back to Finland to find his heir, to whom he will leave his entire fortune.
He calls a young man who looks at his cell phone display, doesn’t recognize the number so doesn’t answer.
The elderly man grows frustrated as the phone rings and rings. He finally hangs up.
A supered message appears which simply reads, “An unknown number could be the most important of your life.”
We’re then informed via a subsequent super that you can text the unknown number to 164300 and “we’ll tell you who called.” The service is from Fonecta, a media company/search industry company in Finland.
Tom Carty of Gorgeous Enterprises, London, directed “Immigrant” for Fonecta and agency SEK & Grey, Helsinki.
Jarkko Tuuri was the lead agency creative.
Merja Metsavaara-Mildh of Front Desk served as agency producer.
Ciska Faulkner produced for Gorgeous. The DP was Bruno Delbonnel. Production designer was John Beard.
Editor was Jonnie Scarlett of The Quarry, London.
Does “Hundreds of Beavers” Reflect A New Path Forward In Cinema?
Hard as it may be to believe, changing the future of cinema was not on Mike Cheslik's mind when he was making "Hundreds of Beavers." Cheslik was in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a crew of four, sometimes six, standing in snow and making his friend, Ryland Tews, fall down funny.
"When we were shooting, I kept thinking: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized," says Cheslik.
And yet, "Hundreds of Beavers" has accrued the stuff of, if not quite myth, then certainly lo-fi legend. Cheslik's film, made for just $150,000 and self-distributed in theaters, has managed to gnaw its way into a movie culture largely dominated by big-budget sequels.
"Hundreds of Beavers" is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.
No one would call "Hundreds of Beavers" expensive looking, but it's far more inventive than much of what Hollywood produces. With some 1,500 effects shots Cheslik slaved over on his home computer, he crafted something like the human version of Donald Duck's snowball fight, and a low-budget heir to the waning tradition of Buster Keaton and "Naked Gun."
At a time when independent filmmaking is more challenged than ever, "Hundreds of Beavers" has, maybe, suggested a new path forward, albeit a particularly beaver-festooned path.
After no major distributor stepped forward, the filmmakers opted to launch the movie themselves, beginning with carnivalesque roadshow screenings. Since opening in January, "Hundreds of Beavers" has played in at least one theater every week of the year, though never more than 33 at once. (Blockbusters typically play in around 4,000 locations.)... Read More