.| OPTIMISTIC PRODUCTIONS |.

Since finding his Grandmother Maroussia Zorokovich’s vivid account of life in and escape from Russia during the 1917 Revolution Dan has been obsessed by her riches to rags story of romance and exile. 2007 saw Optimistic Productions working on green screen sequences bringing the account to life in dramatic form within the development of the drama documentary previously entitled 'From Bolshevism to Belfast'.

In February 2008, using her lively and colourful manuscript as a guide we went on a quest to the Ukraine. We discovered that within what some had dismissed as romantic fiction were the clues that led Dan not only to her estate but to the factory that her father had established in 1904 – a spirits factory that was expropriated during the revolution but which is still open for business almost 100 years later. With this twist in the story comes a new direction for the film as Dan embarks on importing the literal spirit of his ancestors into the UK and, following in their entrepreneurial footsteps, launching his own Vodka Empire with 'Zorokovich 1917'.

View Trailer

Photos from our February Ukrainian odyssey can be seen here

www.flickr.com/photos/25837637@N06/

More information and updates on the film can be found at

www.howtore-establishavodkaempire.vox.com/

Pudding Mill River: Purveyors of Sporting Spirits and Foodstuffs have been gathering the wild fruits of the Lower Lea Valley for generations. Now that the Games are coming to town they are hard at work collecting the last wild harvest (from blackberries to sloes) from the very edges of the Olympic zone. They invite people to gather and harvest with them and taste their delightful products and we are employed within their multimedia division promoting PUDDING MILL RIVER products through film commercials, scientific demonstration documentation and multimedia events.

View Storyboards & Visualisation

www.puddingmillriver.blogspot.com

As part of their local outreach and community engagement programme they are also working with Public Works to produce the Wick Curiosity Shop for the Hackney Wick festival.