Pierre Kozlov, a nihilistic American chauvinist and an arms dealer working for the Occidental Offensive Systems, is invited to play golf in the mysterious K-Zone, "a communist country somewhere in the Caribbean". The winner of the game gets million dollars, the loser a death sentence...

The K-Zone Republic, born during a staged soccer riot circa 1960, is filled with conniving politicians, heat-infected American Black Panthers, crazy anarchists on the airwaves, and feminist double agents. The K-Zone is a country where stern communism finally meets the "better" sides of capitalism.

The Subversion Agency, a spectacular masterpiece by the San Francisco director Mark Boswell was premiered in Miami in May 2003. It is a wilfully obscure Situationist satire, which employs the whole historical repertoire of Brechtian/Godardian alienation effects: jump cuts, unexpected time shifts, questionable propaganda, suspense, and paranoid speculation on an infinite scale! Removed from their original contexts, the archival images of sunny Miami and Havana, combined with the sombre soundtrack by Curd Duca, create an illusion of two cities in the future which have never existed in reality.

"Who really is the subversion agency? So called terrorists? Or businessmen and politicians? Mad dictators, greedy capitalists, immoral criminals?", the narrator Edward G.Robinson asks himself at the beginning of the film. Boswell himself has clearly explained that his intention was to make film which simply asks: "Or is it humanity at large that is the overwhelming corruptive force of life on earth?"

Mark Boswell has previously released ten Dadaist short films: The Mongoloid (1992), Memory Corporation (1996), Kultkino (1998), Galaxie 500 (1999), Vast Floridas (1999), Liquidation of The Wild West (2000), U.S.S.A.:Secret Manual of the Soviet Politburger (2001), Agent Orange (2002) and Deep Blue (2003). He works as the head of the New Genre Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. The Subversion Agency is Boswell's first feature film.

The Subversion Agency. Premiere: 3.5.2003, Miami, USA. Based on the novel El Respubliki K-Zona by Anton Kozlov. Executive producer: David Maurice Letourneau / Nova Kino Films G.m.b.H. Director: Mark Boswell. Director of photography: Orville Nix jr. Archivist: Barron Sherer. Music: Curd Duca. Script: R. M. Flannigan. Actors: Gregg Schumann, (Pierre Kozlov) , Larry Robinson (Erward G. Robinson), Maurice Code (Roberto Flannigan), Antonio Labat (president of K-Zone), Susanne Neugebauer (Anna Coldburg), Miles Sherwood, Jock Mitchell (Jack Tran), Mikail Kashtan (Soviet judge).

Read more...
John Anderson: Welcome to the K-Zone
Mark Boswell: Nova-Kino Manifesto