AGE OF - Bachibouzouk

AGE OF
IRON
EUROPE IN THE HEART OF
THE THIRTY YEARS‘ WAR
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AGE OF IRON
1618 – 1648
AGE OF IRON / PAGE 3
In 2018 the citizens of Europe
will jointly commemorate a
special anniversary that still
defines the modern European
state system – the start of the
Thirty Years‘ War, which raged
from 1618 to 1648. Even 400
years ago, our fellow men and
women – Catholics and Protestants in Germany, France,
Sweden, Denmark, Spain, the
Netherlands and Poland – experienced and understood this
war to be a multi-nation event
of great magnitude. The European dimension of this conflict
presents a core reason and a
fantastic opportunity to organise an international media
event that is educational, fun
and emotionally engaging – as
well as doing justice to this pe-
riod in history. With “AGE OF
IRON”, we want to re-tell the
story of an important period
that fundamentally shaped how
Europe, its religion, culture and
identity developed, and we will
do so by creating an exciting
interaction between television,
internet and museum events.
“AGE OF IRON” is a major
360° project made up of a 6 x
52’ documentary drama series,
a 3 x 40’ drama series, several innovative mobile apps and
books, all of which will supplement an international exhibition.
In the 17th century, for the first
time in the history of mankind,
a generation of painters and illustrators started to develop
a visual mass medium: genre
art – the pictorial representation of scenes and events from
everyday life. The artists visualised the world they lived in all
its facets: markets, domestic
settings, interiors, parties, inn
scenes, street scenes, and many
more. The visual memory of the
17th century will form the artistic and creative core of our project. “AGE OF IRON” is designed
to offer viewers an emotional
access to this seemingly opaque
and very distant period of time.
Using animated paintings (one
step from virtual reality) and
drama sequences, the series will
build a bridge between “now”
and “then” and enable viewers
to dive into everyday life during
the Thirty Years’ War.
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AGE OF IRON / PAGE 5
A 6 x 52’
DOCUMENTARY
DRAMA SERIES
THE EPISODES AND
CHARACTERS
EPISODE 1 - MASTERS OF WAR
FATHER JOSEPH (1577–1638)
Catholic – French
ligious quarrels and lead a final crusade against the Ottoman Empire.
We shall follow him for three episodes from his appointment as a
diplomat to the Pope until his death
in 1638. He is the “leader” of the
first episode - MASTER OF WAR.
* *
The “AGE OF IRON” series will use
the accounts of those who lived
through this long and terrible war
to immerse us in its epic historical
sweep.
We shall experience the war, the
politics, the personal stories and
the overall history of everyday life
in the extremely tense environment of the 17th century from the
points of view of six characters,
from completely different backgrounds and different countries.
They will invite viewers to share
the all-consuming fears and violent upheavals of these thirty years
that marked the end of the Middle
Ages and the birth of a new era.
* *
The Thirty Years’ War was a European cataclysm that took place
as much in the minds of its contemporaries as on the battle fields.
Aware that what they were experiencing was so exceptional and
so excessive, many people took up
their quills to bear witness to the
disaster or to try to transcend their
confusion. Numerous first-person
accounts reveal the lives and emotions of people at the time. These
time capsules relate people’s
fears, feelings and hopes, or simply the unrelieved misery of wartime. They describe an extraordinary situation in stark terms,
giving us a unique inside view of
the broad sweep of history in the
years 1618-48 and of the individual lives of those who lived through
them, whether they were nobles or
people on the bottom rungs of the
social ladder such as tailors, soldiers, traders and street hawkers.
To capture this period in detail,
“AGE OF IRON” will therefore interweave history and individual
stories, focusing in each episode
on one of six main characters,
some of whom rubbed shoulders
with the powerful and the famous,
while others waded through the
mire of the battlefield or illustrated the people’s suffering. Some
made it through the entire conflict, others were cut down before
their prime, but all tell the tale of a
world in the throes of change.
Far from feeling that they are
watching events that bear no relation to their own lives, our viewers will catch themselves saying,
“That could have been me.”
A civil war in Bohemia has spread
to the whole of Europe. After five
years of fighting, the powerful
Habsburg dynasty is still in control
of the Holy Roman Empire, but for
how much longer?
EPISODE 2 - A CRUEL WORLD
BARBARA GSELLER (1605–?)
Catholic – Biberach (a Free City
in the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation)
“France is the instrument of divine
providence, and France’s grandeur is
a matter of providence.”
“In the church the soldiers forced the
town’s inhabitants, both young and old,
to lick the feet of a large metal statue
of the Pope. I had to kiss his backside.
I survived by making them laugh. I said
that I was afraid I stank too much to
kiss His Holiness and I didn’t want the
Pope to catch an illness.”
Barbara Gseller
Father Joseph
Nicknamed the “eminence grise
de l’eminence rouge”, Father Joseph, a Celestine monk, is the
closest adviser to Richelieu, the
greatest strategist of his age. Secretive, shadowy and indispensable, he is a cowled Machiavelli who
lives in the most spartan of conditions. Although he walks barefoot
through the Louvre palace, the
mighty bow fearfully as he passes.
He is the founder of the first modern spy network, infiltrating Capuchin monasteries all over Europe
and turning the Mercure François,
the first European newspaper, into
a propaganda tool for Richelieu.
A pragmatist fanatic, he passes for
a servant of the French crown, but
his secret dream is to pacify the re-
use the same church and share the
running costs. Biberach does not
escape the war, however. Worse,
the Imperial, Swedish and French
armies take turns to capture it.
Barbara’s life becomes an exercise in survival. She has to come
to terms with brutal soldiers who
pillage without a second thought
or force the inhabitants to convert
to their particular religion.
Led by General Wallenstein, the
Imperial troops have retaken territory they had previously conceded,
stretching to the coast of the Baltic Sea. The Protestant forces are
in disarray. Peace is within reach,
but then the Kingdom of Sweden
enters the war, reigniting the conflict. The Swedish monarch, the
intransigent Lutheran Gustavus
Adolphus, pores oil on the flames
of religious discord. This innkeeper
is a gritty, self-confident lady who
supports her entire family. With
her we delve deep into everyday
life among the people of Biberach,
a small town in the far south of
Germany where, for once, Protestants and Catholics coexist without
friction. Here, the two confessions
For over 20 years Barbara manages
to keep her inn intact, surviving the
plague and various massacres. She
shows a great deal of trickery, paying her customers to eat and drink
so that invaders do not loot her
premises, and promising supplies
of alcohol to their officers. In spite
of the war Barbara makes money, provoking jealousy among her
neighbours. Several (bought) witnesses falsely accuse her of witchcraft, and we follow the “minutes”
of her long trial – an instructive
farce about religious excesses. Unlike many others, Barbara withstands torture, argues in her own
defence and catches out her judges.
A cruel world. Barbara is eventually
repudiated, but miraculously escapes with her life. We will discover
the outcome of her case only at the
very end of the final episode ...
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EPISODE 3 – THE AGE OF IRON
PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577 – 1640)
Calvinist, then Catholic – Flemish
The sack of Magdeburg, during
which over 20,000 civilians were
butchered, is a new high water
mark in terror. The death of the
King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, puts paid to Protestant
ambitions, and the demise of the
warlords Tilly and Wallenstein
plunges the Catholic camp into
confusion.
Rubens enjoys rock star status
during his lifetime, and his workshop is a factory churning out
paintings. He travels ceaselessly
around Europe, from the court of
Spain to the French court. Deploying all his flattery and artistic genius, he becomes a close associate
of sovereigns.
AGE OF IRON / PAGE 7
He becomes a master in the art
of encoding letters, and some of
his paintings are open to a variety of interpretations (they contain
symbolic messages).
He converts from Calvinism to
Catholicism. Devastated by the
suffering endured by Dutch civilians during the Thirty Years’
War, he gives up politics, marries
a 16-year-old girl and holes up
in his workshop near Antwerp.
He ends his days disillusioned,
plagued by gout, his hands swollen, incapable of painting. He is
the hero of Episode 3 – THE AGE
OF IRON.
We will follow him for four episodes as he moves from vanity to
a sense of disenchantment.
* *
EPISODE 4 – ACTS OF TREASON
JÖRG JENATSCH (1596–1639)
Protestant, then Catholic – Swiss
polyglot
“I should like the whole world to be in
peace, that we might live in a golden
age instead of an age of iron.”
Peter Paul Rubens
The courts of Europe compete for
his favours. Every monarch wants
to have his or her portrait painted by Rubens, and yet . . . he’s a
spy. He often offers to paint several portraits of a sovereign in order
to linger at a court and continue
his espionage. We know the details of several of his missions for
the King of Spain and the King of
England.
Powerful counsellors have come
to power. In spite of the Treaty
of Prague, Chancellor Oxenstierna of Sweden, Cardinal Richelieu
and the Count-Duke of Olivares
in Spain stubbornly continue the
war, each seeking to seize control
of new territories.
Intelligent, unscrupulous, opportunistic and cruel, Jenatsch is
regarded as a hero of Swiss independence, but peeling back the
veneer one finds a man of often
shady motivations who will do
anything to achieve his objectives. He is a patriot who walks
on a knife-edge. He kills without
a second thought, always on the
brink of spontaneous combustion
– constantly in trouble. His life is
one long series of about-turns. He
is a complex man, in keeping with
his time.
EPISODE 5 - RISES AND FALLS
ANNA WRANGEL (1622–73)
Lutheran – Swedish
“Ever since I have been alive on this
awful Earth, I have seen only a vale
of tears. I am ready for my soul to
die at any moment – once I have
accomplished my destiny.”
Jörg Jenatsch
He starts out as a Protestant pastor, participating in the Inquisition’s tribunals, torturing and
sending innocent people to the
stake.
Out of opportunism he converts to
Catholicism at a Capuchin monastery, then abandons his new religion to rise through the ranks of
the army until he becomes general
of the Grisons region of Switzerland. This does not prevent him
from killing one of his superiors in
a duel after a superficial dispute.
He dreams of reuniting the
Grisons and Valtellina regions,
a vital Alpine pass on the northsouth route across Europe coveted
by all the great powers, thus taking the first steps towards the future Swiss state. He seeks backing
from the French, sends requests
for support to Richelieu and finally
throws in his lot with France – all
the better to betray it.
His opportunism garners him glory and wealth. He ends up being
ennobled by the King of Spain, but
some henchmen disguised under
bearskins slash his body to pieces
with daggers as he is celebrating
Carnival. His murder will never be
fully elucidated.
He is the focus of Episode 4 - ACTS
OF TREASON.
she is snubbed by her husband’s
family, and the celebration of her
marriage to Wrangel so soon after her (hated) mother-in-law’s
death causes a scandal. Anna’s life
shines a searching light on political racketeering in Sweden (supremacy over Baltic trade being
their ultimate objective), power
battles within the military caste,
the morbid nature of everyday life
in a barracks, lost innocence, and
more. She is at the centre of the
episode RISES AND FALLS.
* *
For twenty years communities have
suffered from murder and looting.
Now the soldiers go unpaid and the
“great powers” are ruined. In the
midst of this turmoil, negotiations
get underway to seal the Peace of
Westphalia. It is a fool’s game, for
no one is entirely sure who has won
the war, yet all parties still want to
take advantage ...
At the age of eight Anna Wrangel
sees her father cut down by Imperial troops. She continuously strives
to make a fresh start, but the past
keeps catching up with her.
“In high society in the Kingdom of
Sweden people kill without shedding
blood. Scandal is more to be feared
than disease, decency is the supreme
form of courage, any hint of glamour
denotes a lack of education.”
Anna Wrangel
We will follow her life like a series
of episodes: an orphan taken in
by a convent, she is subsequently adopted by an officer (J. Banér)
and receives an education in army
barracks before eventually marrying the Swedish army general
Wrangel. Theirs is a story of true
love, but with no happy ending.
From growing up as a poor orphan
she becomes a descendant of one
of the most prestigious families in
Sweden. Lacking their “pedigree”
EPISODE 6 - A BITTER PEACE
PETER HAGENDORF (1600-?)
Lutheran – German
the amazing journeys of a mercenary who survived all the horrors of
the Thirty Year’s War.
His adventures begin in Milan as a
tramp. He crosses the Alps with a
companion who dies of exposure.
Hagendorf miraculously survives,
then enlists with Pappenheim’s
Protestant forces (Episode 1). He
covers over 22,000 kilometres, from
Italy to Finland, turning his coat as
opportunities arise. If there is an offer of better pay, he does not think
twice about switching from the
Catholic army to the Protestants.
He takes part in most of the notable
battles of the Thirty Year’s War including Breitenfeld, Nördlingen and
the sack of Magdeburg. Yet he is by
no means a “dog of war”.
“For my coarse companions to leave
me in peace I was obliged to watch
them torture this miserable Spanish
soldier and afterwards drink away
the night. I ended up fighting them
with fists and knives. I could easily
have succumbed to their debauchery. They wanted me to couple with
a Protestant woman, but all I wanted
was to travel again through the lands
of the midnight sun.”
Peter Hagendorf
At last the heavens seem to be
smiling on the prospect of peace.
The Peace of Westphalia deals a fatal blow to old conceptions of empire. Spain falls into line, making
France and Sweden are the main
beneficiaries of the conflict. Despite
the many acts of violence, a general amnesty is granted to all parties.
From the ashes of the Thirty Year’s
War, ideas slowly emerge that will
come into their full flowering in
the Age of Enlightenment. A new
world is on the march ...
The fortuitous discovery in 1988 of a
war diary kept by Peter Hagendorf,
a simple German foot soldier, was
a major event. It is the only known
account of the daily life of a soldier
from this period. In it we can read
Hagendorf has a moral conscience.
He is not fooled by the manipulation being deployed in the name of
religion. He is educated and capable of showing compassion. Death
is his profession, as he is always
on the move to earn the money
to provide for his family (his wife
and children trail around after the
troops), who will eventually expire
on the road. He emerges from the
Thirty Years’ War a broken man,
stripped of his possessions by
peasants, without a regiment, with
no money, no alcohol and no family. Throughout the series we will
follow Hagendorf’s slow descent
into hell, which comes to a head in
Episode 6 – A BITTER PEACE.
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AGE OF IRON / PAGE 9
VISUAL CONCEPT
We shall make use of various
scriptwriting and dramatic techniques including documentary
fiction, illustrations and animation to tell this epic tale.
Documentary fiction is the cornerstone of the series. It is written and structured around a solid
base of ego-documents – period
material. Our aim is to create a
film narrative that goes beyond
conventional reconstruction. Far
from being satisfied with simply
staging what the particular character wrote, the scenes will move
the action forwards and bring to
the screen a wealth of emotions
that transcend simple verbal narration. In the fiction scenes, we
will interweave a variety of perspectives, events and sudden reversals into a whole – much like
a modern television series. The
lead characters will recount their
experiences, their fears and their
everyday difficulties. The voices
of these characters – tradesmen,
soldiers, princes, monks, canteen women – will be distilled for
us in dialogues and voice-over
commentaries that express their
inner thoughts. We tested this
same approach in our series 14 –
WORDS AND WEAPONS, which
recently won the prestigious Gold
World Medal at the New York
Film Festival (in the docudrama
category) and was selected for
Banff Festival.
In parallel to the different written
accounts, we also have over 3,000
paintings, etchings and drawings
representing the visual memory
of the 17th century, from Jacques
Callot to the Flemish School.
These are our authentic archive
material and they will be incorporated into the narrative as static or
moving shots using state-of-theart animation techniques. Along-
side these period paintings we
will also be able to make use of the
earliest newspapers (Mercure de
France) and maps, many of them
military, that will give us a better
understanding of the new Europe
that was taking shape.
Historical events and dates will
form the basis for a detailed commentary. This will create a link
between the two visual systems –
fiction and animated archive material – as well as providing important information. As the series
is structured chronologically and
the focus is on the subjective experiences of the protagonists, the
commentary will be told in the
historic present.
Historians will support us in our
research and provide us with information – Henri Sacchi in
France, Hans Medick in Germany
and Bo Erickson in Sweden.
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AGE OF IRON / PAGE 11
A 360° PROJECT
This project is being developed
in close cooperation with leading
European museums – talks with
the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the
Vasa Museum in Stockholm and
the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna have already started. The intention is to stage the
first ever European exhibition in
the run-up to and alongside the
television broadcast of “AGE OF
IRON”. This exhibition will be a
coordinated museum world premiere, in which the major Eu-
ropean institutions in the fields
of painting, archaeology, opera, military history and religion
jointly tell the story of the Thirty
Years’ War, orchestrating a massive international prelude and
media launch for the series.
The connection between the project and the museums will be further strengthened via a mobile
app, which is designed to recognise paintings in the exhibitions
and show animations and short
End of development
May 2016
Pre-production:
June – December 2016
Production/shooting:
January – March 2017
Post-production:
March – November 2017
Delivery:
December 2017
clips from the series, as well as
providing in-depth explanations.
In addition, it will be possible to
use the animations from “AGE OF
IRON” to create a virtual environment within the museums, where
visitors can immerse themselves
in life during the Thirty Years’
War. The use of apps and elements
of virtual reality will enhance the
cross-promotion of the series and
exhibition, as well as opening up
both channels to new viewers and
visitors.
A 6 x 52’ documentary drama series
A 3 x 40’ drama
Several innovative web and mobile apps
An interactive book
An international exhibition
A CO-PRODUCTION BY
COMMISSIONING EDITORS
Hélène Coldefy – ARTE France, Unité Découverte et Connaissance
Martin Pieper – ZDF/ARTE
DEVELOPED WITH THE SUPPORT OF
LOOKS FILM
Gunnar Dedio
+49 171 1937196
dedio@looksfilm.tv
LA PRODUCTION
Carine Leblanc
+33 6 76 77 16 47
carineleblanc@laproduction.net
BACHIBOUZOUK
Laurent Duret
+33 6 76 77 16 47
laurent@bachibouzouk.net