MATHIUS´ WORLD

Imagine a future society where war, poverty, inequality and discrimination has vanished. Imagine that in this precise society everybody is dedicated to creative activities and lives on a barter-based economy regulated by a bank of time. Sounds good, right? But...forget about expecting a classical futuristic aesthetic -Mathius´ future world stems from the 80´s - and forget about logic...magic as a scientific accident affects and changes everything.

THE HISTORY

Berlin, year 421 of the New Order (2407 A.D.)

The world lives a long and prosperous period of peace since a cataclysm ended half of humanity and the previous order in 1986 A.D. Mathius is a fashion designer whose life is transformed when she discovers a trunk that opens the door to a magical force from those 80's. Her relationship with her world changes as her contact with magic grows and she begins to have doubts about the origin of the new order and the truth hidden by "THE CATASTROPHY".

THE IMPROVISATION

MATHIUS MARVELLOUS SHOP is a futuristic comedy between the utopian and dystopian, that revolves around the power of creation and magic. It is conceived as a collective and multidisciplinary project. MMS features some of the best artists of our generation providing them with the freedom to create a unique universe through improvisation upon the back of a concrete plot structure. Every dialogue, dance, music or performance was improvised in different ways in every take.

WHO IS MATHIUS?

REBECCA HILES aka KIM ROSARIO aka MARVEL MOOR

The woman of three names has actually had more...She should in fact have even more. Performer, singer, fashion designer, actress...her universe is endless. The film wraps around her and her world because it originates from her and her world. She is a part of what we call Generation Berlin, and embodies a lifestyle, an attitude in life...Now she confronts being herself in a fictional future universe.

NORMCORE PROPHET

JORGE SEGURA

Jorge Segura is the godfather of a whole generation of comedians in Spain. He is the founder of the Madrid Comedy Club and has performed for Paramount, Comedy Central, Noches de Comedia and has endlessly toured the country with his routines. MMS means pushing him to the other side and making him the subject of his parody. The result is mindblowing and breathtaking.

THE MAGIC

JONE SAN MARTÍN

Jone is force, talent and magic. Anybody who has worked with her knows that. It is no wonder William Forsythe had her by his side for more than two decades. First in the Frankfurt Ballet and then in The Forsythe Company. She has worked with the best coreographers of the world and has willingly allowed herself to be swept into different disciplines and projects when she has believed they are worth it. MMS moves by the beat of her overwhelming fragility and she is the guardian of its secrets.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAGIC

IVÁN MARTINOZ

The raw talent of Iván devours the screen. After terrorising the main character of our first feature film with the deepest of the "deeps" of all times, the bastard cousin of Benicio del Toro embodies this time around the dark side of magic with more folds and crevices than his vocabulary catalogue. Beware of what you wish, they say...but he just wants to hang out.

THE WOMEN BEHIND MATHIUS MARVELLOUS SHOP

SACRAMENTO AMATE aka MIS PAPELICOS

One of the ultimate pleasures of filming Mathius Marvellous Shop has been to put this incredible woman in front of the camera. Mis Papelicos has been challenging any preconceived rules about social media for years, has more Instagram followers than Pedro Almodóvar and has been featured in the Top Ten of Over 50 influencers by Huffington Post and Vogue. Her unique style and force are an inspiration and a reference for Mathius in reality and in fiction and she well...she kind of also loses it when it comes to the well being of her daughter in both worlds.

MARTA BASSOLS

It is no use saying that she is our muse because she glides and hovers over everything and everybody. She is rightfully the muse of an independent cinema that is more obscure than it should. True Love (Ion de Sosa, 2011), Sueñan los Androides (Ion de Sosa, 2014), El Futuro (Luis López Carrasco, 2013), Ikea 2 (Burnin Percebes, 2016) and - naturally - Der Nowak (Paola Álvarez and Manuel Escorihuela, 2016) are amongst the films this incredible actress has performed in. She is also a curator, a writer and a super woman in general.

CECILIA BARTOLOMÉ

The history of Spain and its cinema are transversally cut by her. It is said, that she is the most feminist and censored cinematographer of all times in the country. Little is said though of how she is one of the most groundbreaking, unique in style, and that she has been a witness and a megaphone to topics that others preferred to bury in the sand. Margarita y el Lobo and Carmen de Carabanchel portray the models of women we would like the women of our story to stem from and her Después de... documentaries would be the society they would like to leave behind. Cecilia and her work are clearly inspiring but the privilege of having her "conspire" with us cannot be put down in words.

TIME AND ART

RACHEL LAMOT AND MIT BORRÁS

There is nobody better to assess creativity in the future in minutes than these two beings of the future. They live and survive by and for art. As almighty directors of the Bank of Time of MMS, Rachel and Mit are behind everything - once again - both in fiction and in reality. Rachel opens the door of the past to Mathius and is the magical hand behind the Art Direction of the film. Mit Borrás on the other hand delights us by creating the genius´ language in the form of two exclusive and fascinating pieces for the story. He will also design the film poster.

THE EYE THAT SEES AND LOOKS UPON THE WORLD OF MATHIUS

CRIS AMATE

Cris is the eye that beholds and the third heartbeat of Mathius. She brought order and temperance to the preproduction, her passion for imagery and she will yet colour the world to be. She has become so part of the Mathius experience, that she is now co-producer with her Berlin film production company Dochka Films. Her assistants, Gema Segura and the incredible and omnipresent Moi in Spain and the queen of steady-hands Andrea Ramirez in Germany provided the icing on the cake of the imagery work during the shooting.

THUNDERS AND WHISPERS

MIGUEL CAPRARA

Clothes of the future that sound with every gesture, naked torsos, improvised sequences... the nightmare of any sound mixer. The sound of Mathius will be key to the story and the whole base comes from the impeccable work of Miguel who - not without sweating - managed to capture every whisper without losing the rhythm.

AND THE REST OF THE TEAM BEHIND

The very generous owners of the locations, our hairdressing team, costumes, make-up, official and improvised assistants, gafers, supporting actors that make improvisation an art, the hostesses that stretch staff lists...behind MMS there are sooooo many people!

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

The crowdfunding money will go exclusively to two purposes

Finance the postproduction of sound, video, colour grading and FX. The preproduction and the filming of MMS have been fully self-financed but our budget is limited and we need a little help and support to finish the film. There´s still a long way to go for you to be embraced by the world of Mathius in the cinema. The bright side of it is though, that our postproduction team is the best you can get out there: José Luis Alcaine and José Tome in the levels, Sergio Jiménez in the editing, Cris Amate in the colour grading and Barbara Lanzarote in the FX. Their work is exquisite and is very time consuming. Time we clearly need to compensate for with a coherent salary.
Finance consistent salaries for the participants of the film. Those who have already dedicated their best during preproduction and the filming have done so accepting lower salaries than they deserve. If we manage to exceed our initial target, we will distribute the surplus amongst the participants in order to come as close as possible to the salary they should have earned initially.

How does this translate into our TARGETS?

If we get to 7.500€ we will be able to pay for the basic work of postproduction. The salaries of the postproduction team will be adjusted to the limit, even a little below the minimum and we will probably have to find another strategy for the financing of the final copy in DCP. But that would be the minimum for the film to become a reality.
If we get to 10.000€ we will have the complete postproduction work done and consistent salaries for the postproduction team.
If we get to 15.000€ we will be able to increase the salaries of the participants of the film up to 25%.
If we get to 25.000€ we will increase the salaries up to the standards and we might even be able to have salaries for ourselves as well. We will even have a big enough budget for the final copy and to distribute the film around different film festivals.
Over 25.001€ the producers of the film will begin to recover the 40.000€ investment made up til now.

PAO AND MANU FILMPRODUCTION

Paola Álvarez Filmproduktion is in fact Pao and Manu Filmproduktion. After extensive careers in the audiovisual and music worlds, we meet almost a decade ago - which is about the same time we have been pushing forward together all kinds of artistic projects both in Berlin and in Madrid. Since 2014 we have been dedicated to cinema with the determination to find a place for different films, far from any kind of rule or preconceived ideas, free films. Our first feature film Der Nowak - filmed in 16mm and almost entirely on a one shot basis during two weeks in the Autumn of 2015 - had a very nice tour around different European Festivals with premieres in Berlin, Barcelona (Craft Film Fest Barcelona) and Madrid (Rizoma) and honourable mentions in Los Angeles and Manaos. Without any further contacts or support we managed to bring Der Nowak, this dark and asfixiating creature, to life.

With Mathius Marvellous Shop we took a leap and decided to integrate into the project a score of artists whose vision of art and freedom coincides in many points with our own. We just had to look around us. Over these years of many projects we have encountered wonderful people, professionals and artists. At first glance it may seem we have nothing in common, but every piece of work with every one of them has taken us to incredible places. I like to think that we have become attached through an invisible thread, that has finally found its colour with Mathius and draws the map of the particular world that we all together inhabit in a parallel universe.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE....

http://www.paolaalvarezfilmproduktion.com