Heart Land: A story of Entrepreneurs

“Lord of the Flies” and “Peter Pan” have played an important role in the creation of “Heart Land.”

Matthew A. Collins

The entrepreneurs Matthew A. Collins and Delfine Paolini add the independent film industry with a character movie called “Heart Land.” A story on how the end of the world by a zombie apocalypse affects a group of children.

Working in the film industry

Writer and producer Delfine Paolini started to work on movies in 2007 with the support of her long time friend Matthew A. Collins. Director and writer Matthew A. Collins has storytelling in his blood, since both of his parents were in the show business Matthew started working as a screenwriter.

Center Mass Studios 

Center Mass Studios (CMS) was created in 2007, by Matt, Delfine and fellow producer Ryan Daly. CMS worked on several small short films, Delfine and Ryan produced the projects while Matt directed them. Afterwards the studios hired Lukasz Pruchnik as their cinematographer.

In 2010, CMS worked in a TV pilot for a series created for French Television, “Les Enfants du Ciel.” Now CMS is working in their upcoming film, “Heart Land,” which is its most ambitious project.

The idea behind the movie theme

“Like most of the best ideas I’ve had, it came to me as a dream.” shared Collins. The director also pointed out that the story comes from his fascination of what happens to children when they are not supervised by an adult.

Delfine Paolini, the producer also shared her thoughts on the film, saying that they are ready to produce such a controversial film, since it involves children defending themselves against a horde of zombies while maintaining their innocence.

Central Mass Studios on the set

Collins view on a zombie apocalypse world

This is the first horror movie for Collins, and the idea of a young protagonist was to take a different perspective on a survival story. Another aspect is the coming-of-age of the children during a zombie threat that any audience can find interesting.

The similarity with “Lord of the Flies” occurred by one of the main elements of his project, children’s living without grownups, which also led to a dark “Peter Pan” story were children are left to fend for themselves against zombies instead of pirates.

“With a film like this, you can’t really escape so it must be embraced.” Matt Collins.

Throughout the story many children are childish since this will maintain the viewers on their toes, however the film promises fun moments and dark times of recklessness. (AV)

“In the end, we are storytellers and we’ll continue to do this despite the budget or medium.” Delfine Paolini