We’re excited to be heading off to Jersey this weekend to the wonderful Branchage Film Festival to take part in a crowd funding workshop led by Charlie Phillips, Marketplace director for Sheffield DocFest alongside Lauren Simpson who produced the Emily James excellent film Just Do It about political activism.

Our little red vodkamobile is already getting around – this time to the Slaughterhouse in Hoxton. Photos of partygoers going for it on our new Zorokovich 1917 Vodka facebook page.

We’ve been keeping our animation sequences rather hidden as other episodes from the film went out on babelgum throughout the process. Here are some stills as a taster. Simon Ball is great.

We ‘ve had a good time over the past two days manning our Zorokovich Vodka stand at the Boutique Bar Show in the Royal Horticultural Hall, London. Our good friend and talented colleague Christophe Tweedie caught a lot of it on camera and there are lots of shots of visitors to the stand being uploaded continuously at our new Zorokovich 1917 Vodka facebook page as the group page gets archived – do please join the page if you like. Thanks to Christophe, Gina, Maito and the dashing bolshevik, Anthony for working to create a great stand and great time. And thanks to Boutique Bar Show who we’ll be joining again in a few weeks time in Edinburgh.

We are really excited to say that ‘How To Re-Establish A Vodka Empire’ will premier at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival
in the section New British Cinema that provides a platform for original cinematic voices from around the UK. Thank you, thank you so much to everyone who’s been involved on this whirlwind journey and hope to see you there!

A big welcome to Gina Boreham who is working with us on all things vodka and film. We’ve had great fun with her over the years organising various Optimistic Immigrants nights on the town and she’s introduced us to some amazing musicians such as Piotr Jordan and the band she manages Dunajska Kapelye who will be playing in this year’s London Jazz Festival at the Greennote (23rd September) and the Vortex (18th November) . Now she’s hard at work with Dan organising meetings and visiting bars and is a very welcome addition to our Optimistic HQ.

Congratulations and thank you to all at Quadrangle Film Festival for inviting us to take part. We had a great time setting up our mobile vodka bar for the first time and doing a session with editor John Mister on the film making process and relationships.

Our Piaggio Apé is here! Having loved them for years and most recently putting them on a ‘what would you pack into a container from Italy’ (alongside lots of sun umbrellas, iron railings and olive oil) list whilst on a strange road trip we managed to find a specialist importer in Weston Super Mare.
It may not have Russian origins but we love it and are in the process of customising our very own vodkamobile to take around town. Recent tests show around town might be the best place for it as a max of a bone shaking 48 miles an hour downhill and 20 uphill make longer distances not that attractive. Look out for it on the streets of London.

Thanks very much to Maito for working on the flag whilst in Spain ready for our next outing at the Boutique Bar Show.

Big Congratulations to the film’s composer Andrew Skeet who, together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra brought the house down at the Royal Festival Hall last friday arranging and conducting The Greatest Video Game Music. Never having played many video games in our lives didn’t stop us from enjoying it and seeing Andrew in action and we managed to sample a delicious Zorokovich 1917 cocktail at Skylon getting ridiculously excited about seeing our bottle glinting amid the impressive array on the bar.

His soundtrack for the film is fantastic, the album of the film score is out on Universal and we’re currently developing some of the songs emerging from this and inspired by Grandmother Maroussia’s manuscript for further release.