Empire North is a 2010 film written and directed by Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov is a Danish-Icelandic artist and filmmaker .His work has been shown in museums such as New Museum and Stedelijk Museum. He is best known for infiltrating a Chinese weapons fair in his ID Sniper project. Boeskov's work includes drawings, paintings, video and film. His work has been...

. The film follows Jakob Valdason (played by Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov is a Danish-Icelandic artist and filmmaker .His work has been shown in museums such as New Museum and Stedelijk Museum. He is best known for infiltrating a Chinese weapons fair in his ID Sniper project. Boeskov's work includes drawings, paintings, video and film. His work has been...

) a cartoonist whose life changes drastically when he invents a fictional hi-tech weapon called the ID Sniper. The film is partly based upon the story of ID Sniper. The ID Sniper was an art project that took place in Copenhagen and Beijing August 2002.

Fictional elements

Although Empire North contains documentary elements, it is a fiction film, filmed in studios with professional actors. Honey Hollmann (the daughter of Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson

John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...

), plays the girlfriend of the main character. In the film the weapons fair takes place in Qatar

Qatar

Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...

. In real life it took place in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

.

Documentary elements

The film contains several documentary elements:

• Real footage of Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Boeskov is a Danish-Icelandic artist and filmmaker .His work has been shown in museums such as New Museum and Stedelijk Museum. He is best known for infiltrating a Chinese weapons fair in his ID Sniper project. Boeskov's work includes drawings, paintings, video and film. His work has been...

 at a weapons fair in Qatar

Qatar

Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...

• Real emails and business offers from a range of international weapons dealers

• The real co-inventor of the ID Sniper, Kristian Von Bengtson

Copenhagen Suborbitals

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a non-profit organization working towards suborbital manned spaceflight. Founded in 2008 by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen the project has accomplished a successful sea launch of a test hybrid rocket, carrying a full scale human model...

 plays himself in the film

Misc.

Empire North has music by Sort Sol

Sort Sol

Sort Sol is a pioneer rock band from Copenhagen, Denmark. The band was formed in 1977 as a punk rock outfit, originally under the name Sods. Despite drastic changes in the group's line-up, their current name, which translates to English as black sun, has remained with them since the early 1980s...

, Goodiepal

Goodiepal

Goodiepal or Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen, whose real name is Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester, is a controversial Danish/Faroese musician/composer wanted by the Danish police authorities for an unsolved theft from the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus...

, Timothy DeWit

Gang Gang Dance

Gang Gang Dance is an American experimental music band based in Manhattan, New York City. The band is known for its distinctive sound which features synthesized electronics and percussion, plus the varied vocal styles of singer Lizzi Bougatsos...

 and Mads Heldtberg

Literary references.

The film contains several literary references. Among them are references to: Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

's Pale Fire

Pale Fire

Pale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...

, Klaus Mann

Klaus Mann

- Life and work :Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a...

's Mephisto

Mephisto

Mephisto or Mephistopheles is one of the chief demons of German literary tradition.Mephisto or Mephistopheles may also refer to:* Mephisto , a high-speed human-powered vehicle...

, Guy Debord

Guy Debord

Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...

's The Society Of The Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...

.