In memory of Rutger

AFANzine - Blade Runner

AFANzine - Art as told by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

BLADE RUNNER

Glows of humanity in the night of the future

 Written, edited and produced by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

Music inspired by the soundtrack of VANGELIS composed by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

  In a 2019 technologically different from that imagined by Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick, AFAN analyzes that one described by the film that in 1982 was able, in its own way, to prophesy the loss of empathy and the hyperconnected replicants loneliness of the current future. Between video-magazine and documentary, informative program and video-art, in this series conceived and produced for the web, the multimedianic artist AFAN Alessandro Fantini browses the art currents and the artists who have contributed to its aesthetic training over the years, affecting the development of his personal multi-faceted approach to creativity.

You Tube premiere of "New York, a venture"

Get ready for the You Tube premiere of my indie movie "New York, a venture" shot in Manhattan and screened at the Dobbs Ferry Movies4movies film festival in 2017.

Share the watch page and make sure to be there tomorrow  at 4:00 p.m. (Central European Time).

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO4v09s9pQ4

 

 

 

AFAN's DISPLATES

https://displate.com/afantini

DRAW IN

    

DRAW IN (2018)

It will draw you in if you will draw it

Sometime the rugged countryside isn't the ideal place where isolating yourself from the world (surely not from all the other worlds).

 Directed, written, performed, edited and produced by AFAN Alessandro Fantini.

 Music, sound effects and cinematography by AFAN Alessandro Fantini. 

AFAN PICTURES 2018

TEASER

    

Teaser (2018) 

Directed and edited by AFAN Alessandro Fantini 

Music by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

About untraced artistic paths

My answers to the fineartamerica.com interview:

1. If someone were to film a documentary about your life, how would the story go?

Actually, since my adolescence I started writing a sort of screenplay of my own life, just like I was aware I was going to shoot it by myself at a later stage in my existence. Indeed in 2012 I’ve directed a bio-documentary about my artistic path up until that year. The opening scenes showed the landscape of the Sangro Valley in Middle Italy, where I was born and where I currently live. The image of the Sangro river (from the Spanish word “sangre” meaning “blood”) starting from the snowy mountains and ending in the Adriatic Sea, is presented as a metaphor of the inner stream of visions and irrational desires nurturing my creative quest from childhood to these days. Somehow every painting, movie, musical composition and novel I’ve created until now could be defined as a blood cell floating along the mystical side of the river. Therefore, the topography of the valley could be used as an allegorical map of my own human and artistic odyssey.

2. What were your biggest triumphs and challenges? What decisions did you make that shaped or changed the direction of your life? Who influenced or mentored you along the way?

To be honest I think that nowadays the fact of being a creative person is a challenge itself. No one will take your artistic vocation seriously until you’re able to show that you’re making a living with it. Maybe the biggest triumph is when you’re completely free to create without being forced to constantly show or explain what and why you’re working on certain projects. Choosing to not become a teacher or a factory employee after graduating with honours to keep working on my artworks, was the most important and daring decision I’ve taken in my life (however in Italy is hard to make a career as a university teacher without the support of a family of teachers or influent people).
I’ve always been a self-taught artist. Aside of the lessons of masters such as Vermeer, Dalì, Magritte, Giger, Wyeth, Kubrick, Bunuel, Lynch, over the years no one influenced or taught me anything useful. On the contrary, I must thank every art critic or professional working in the arts and showbiz who tried to convince me that an artistic career was a colossal waste of time. In a certain sense, the sheer amount of art I’ve produced over the last two decades is even the natural feedback to the defeatism surrounding me. It’s like I need to create an imaginary world where I can find a shelter from the nihilism and the brutal pragmatism of contemporary society, allowing me to give an aesthetic interpretation of the latter.

3. Did you pursue your childhood dreams, and are you happy with where your life is at today?

Being an artist means preserving the playful anarchy of the childhood. Only in this attractive chaos it’s possible to exert the freedom to create new rules and aesthetic dimensions. Like Nietzsche once wrote, maturity means rediscovering the seriousness one had as a child at play. The artistic activity is the better way to preserve it. Though, happiness isn’t a term relatable to the creative process. For me the main motivation of an artist life is to constantly challenge the boundaries of his own “safety zone”. That basically means living in a persistent yet voluptuous state of prolific anguish.

My "Blade Runner 2049" oil painting featured by Sylvia Hoeks

— BLU-RAY IS HERE — ✨✨✨Absolutely LOVE this oil on canvas by Alessandro Fantini @afanmultimedianic ✨ that I’m posting in honor of @bladerunnermovie coming out on BLU-RAY TODAY 🙏🏼💥 #getyours #bluray @bladerunnermovie #bladerunner2049 #ryangosling #jaredleto #harrisonford #denisvilleneuve #anadearmas #mackenziedavis #davidbautista

A post shared by Sylvia Hoeks (@sylviahoeks) on Jan 17, 2018 at 1:24am PST

TIRANTI TRANSIT

TIRANTI TRANSIT



Tiranti Transit by Alessandro Fantini from AFan Alessandro Fantini on Vimeo.

 The following is an interesting review of one my early short movies shot in DV provided some years ago by the american director and writer Patrick Meaney

Tiranti Transit is a short film by Italian director, Alessandro Fantini. It was interesting approaching this film because I can see so much of my own work in the film, both the triumphs and the failures.

The film's in Italian, and I didn't have access to the English dialogue, but I think it's so well made that you don't even need to understand the dialogue. The primary concern is building a mood, and what lingers with me after viewing the film is not the story, it's more this feeling of melancholy and warmth. In that respect, it's a very prototypical European art film. I haven't seen that much of his work, but it's reminiscent of Antonioni, with a decentralized narrative and a focus on aesthetic qualities.

I think that's what makes cinema so powerful, a Wong Kar-Wai film wouldn't work in any other medium because it's not solely about the story, or solely about the aesthetics, it's about the fusion of music and visual to create a singular feeling. The score in this film is fantastic, moody and Blade Runneresque, it's a large part of why the short works as well as it does.

The best moments in the film are at the end. There's a fantastic shot where the woman opens a door inside and there's a cut to a wide open road, which we then see her standing on. It's a great moment of surreal cutting, using editing to make a transition that's not possible in reality. This leads up to the really nice ending of the film.

My big issue with the film, something that's true of a lot of low budget, digital works, is that some shots just feel like home video, and that takes you out of the story. It's the biggest concern in working with digital, I absolutely love DV and would gladly shoot it over film, but it means that you need to better, to ensure that each shot has the care you would spend for a filmbased take. Even David Lynch had some really sloppily composed shots in Inland Empire, it's tough to nail every shot and a few here just didn't quite work. But, it didn't fully take me out of the story's mood, and I was able to quickly shift back in and reengage with the story. Maybe some color correction would resolve that issue, or more likely, just a higher end camera.

The other thing I wasn't sure about was the zooms. Some of them were great, but some felt a bit arbitrary. Some filmmakers use the zoom lens in great ways, most notably Robert Altman. I feel like with the zoom you either have to be really slow, or really fast. If you use the default camera speed, it can feel rote. But, I'm not sure if I'm reacting that way just because I know about cameras and can see how it worked. However, I'm still glad that he tried it, because some of those zooms made for great moment.

I'd rather watch a film like this than a polished Hollywood movie that doesn't have any energy in the shooting. I'd rather have a few shots that don't quite make it if it means having some of the fantastic compositions that appear throughout the film. As I've said many times before, I'd rather see a film that aims high and doesn't quite make it than something that has no ambition and nails it. So, the flaws of this film don't mean that it's not a great viewing. This film is a world you can slip into, and I really enjoyed my time there. And, the ending had a primal power that I found very affecting and well done.

If you want to view the film, it's on line here, and there's more information on Alessandro, including some fantastic art, right here. at his site.

One more for the road

  

This is the first of my 4 handmade artworks submitted to the Talenthouse "Blade Runner 2049" contest. Ridley Scott and a Warner Bros jury selected the best five artworks inspired by the upcoming sequel directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Harrison Ford reprising his role as Deckard and Ryan Gosling as a rookie Blade Runner.

 I think the high secrecy enveloping the plot of the movie has made harder for the partecipants to figure out a relevant visual concept. That's why I've created a more surreal yet plausible image by using the Deckard's jukebox (shown in an early featurette) projecting the holographic faces of the actors around the "mnemonic" globe, hinting at the "musical" enigma of reality and memory. I still don't know if the fact an awful child scribble on Talenthouse got more support than this and the other 3 artworks is an amusing or depressing statement about the perception of art and creativity on line.

 Moreover, having just seen the winners of the Talenthouse contest, I've realized that joining this kind of "competitions" has no point at all (beside getting the chance to figure out some new specific movie-based art). 

All the art contests with money reward that I've joined over the years were won by friends or relatives of the jury (that's how it generally works in Italy, where you have to make sure to have the right affiliations even before starting to dream about becoming an artist).

Anyway, I'm glad that at least an oil painting has been selected (that one by the talented Nicky Barkla)

My personal reward is that no artist have thought about using the holographic jukebox as a way to "symbolize" and provide a conceptual frame to the traditonal composition of "actors faces" in order to underline the ambiguity between artificial and real. Indeed, despite the technical skills, the winners look like "replicants"of the same poster pattern.

No doubt it has been a very tough job for the jury to select only 5 works from the sheer amount of excellent submissions. Nevertheless the lack of variety in visual ideas makes you think that the rules of the contest should have clarified that they just wanted "alternative posters featuring the actors" (possibly made with vexel art by Philippine designers, that's a more elegant way to call photomanipulation) instead of "artworks inspired by", a word that defines a far more creative and open-minded approach than simply re-assembling photobased faces with glaring neon-like colors.

Well, at least I know that I've spent 8 days on a real rough canvas with real brushes painting with real greasy oil colors watching it with my real eyes. 

As Deckard says in the new movie"I know what's real!" (am I a Nexus 7?). 

Checked and cleared! Have a better one!

Reminiscing the floating world: about EDOnism and a giant catfish

Edonism is the tragic story of James Hallway, an English businessman from the UK who comes to Tokyo looking to fulfill his dreams and lead a peaceful life with his beautiful wife, Sophie. Instead he finds toil, torment and alcoholism. Unable to bear his descent into self-destruction, Sophie leaves, abandoning him to his downward spiral into the gutter. Day by day, his reality is consumed by hallucinations and weird perceptions. Once things can’t get any worse, he falls into a coma.

When he awakens from the coma, he begins to learn some terrifying truths about his condition and his connection to a long-forgotten legend from ancient Japan. Together with the resourceful Dr Geena Landlord he attempts a desperate quest of discovery that leads them both to the very heart of a conspiracy involving a secret government order and the enigmatic being known as the The Cat Fish. 

The sci-fi mystery movie "EDOnism" filmed in Tokyo, directed, written, edited by Alessandro Fantini and produced by Lorenzo Fantini in 2010, had its Italian premiere at the first edition of "La Selva Nera" international film festival in Selvazzano Dentro, Padua, founded and directed by film critic Massimo Bezzati and filmmaker-writer Stefano Bovi.

 When I faced for the first time the idea to shoot a movie in Tokyo, while I was discussing the hypothesis with then soon-to-be EDonism producer Lorenzo Fantini during his latest stay in Italy in 2009, I immediately thought that the script should have deal with something gigantic, frightening and epic. No other city in the world is able to suggest the feeling of a majestic and intimidating human beehive as much as Tokyo. It seemed that all my obsessions for movies like Blade Runner, Akira and Ghost in the Shell as well as my interest in Shintoism, Ukiyo-e art,  and Suehiro Maruo, would have take me sooner or later  to nowhere but to the enigmatic land of geisha, samurai, Godzilla and hi-tech marvels.  As usual, the way I fleshed out the concept and the story was closer to the process of conceiving a painting or a comic than to a traditional pre-production of a movie.
EDOnism FB page: https://www.facebook.com/edonismmovie/

Director, editor, animator, screenwriter, co-producer and soundtrack composer: AFan Alessandro Fantini
Producer, art director, co-writer, casting director and location manager: Lorenzo Fantini
Line producer: Miles Elliott
Assistant producer: Lucy King
Post production supervisor: Nate Jensen
Make up artist: Kana Yoshida
Cast: Sacha Mühlebach, Helene Salvini Fujita, Hiro Super, Lucy King, Lorenzo Fantini, Kyle H., Nate Jensen, Tony Evans, Alessandro Fantini, Cyrus Malekani.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller, drama, adventure
Shooting format: HDV
Runtime: 65 min.
Country: Italy, Japan
Language: English
Filming locations: Tokyo
Release date: June 2010

Movies4movies

 

Alessandro Fantini directed the mystery movie "New York, a venture" (the third chapter of his "The Hidden Cities Mind trilogy") between New Jersey and Manhattan during the summer of 2014 so it's quite meaningful and riveting that it will be premiered close to its locations at the Dobbs Ferry public library, 21.6 miles away from the Bryant park library and 17.0 miles away from The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Don't miss the opportunity to watch it for the first time on the big screen of the first edition of "Movies4movies" film festival.

 

"New York, a venture" will screen at the Dobbs Ferry public library on February 25 at 11:30 after the short-movie The Tell-Tale Heart – Sisters by Christine Parker.

 

Movies4movies is a film festival founded by filmmaker Natalie Sena Murray committed to providing opportunities for filmmakers to show their work and to supporting independent film by providing grants to filmmakers. The first installment of movies4movies will be held on Saturday, February 25 at the Dobbs Ferry Public Library. This one day festival will feature programming that includes feature films, short films, and documentaries as well as networking opportunities.

More info on

https://senastudiosny.com/program-february-25

https://www.facebook.com/newyorkaventure

"New York, a venture" will premiere in...New York (obviously)

The fateful event has arrived.

The next February 25 at the Dobbs Ferry public library, New York, the first edition of  "Movies4movies" film festival will premiere my indie movie "New York, a venture" filmed in New Jersey and Manhattan. 

More news to come very soon.

 

 

Los Angeles - 30 after Roy, 34 after Ridley

Opening scene from the "Blade Runner 2049" teaser trailer 

Since the first time I watched it on a tv channel in the mid nineties, I've used to pay a periodic visit to that rusty and gloomy Los Angeles set in the imaginary vintage future conceived by Ridley Scott, Jordan Cronenweth, Syd Mead and Philip K. Dick. 

 I got so accustomed to its hazy and cyber-gothic mood that I've often transposed and filtered it into my artworks, tales and movies, specially "EDOnism", filmed 6 years ago in some Tokyo locations dramatically reminiscent of Animoid Row, some of them enriched by a night snow that now seems to have replaced the rain in the upcoming installment.

 

Up and down: stills from "EDOnism" directed by Alessandro Fantini and produced by Lorenzo Fantini in 2010.

Honestly I never expected to see an "updated" version of "Blade Runner" 34 years after its (initially unsuccessful) release.  As many other admirers of that vision, I still consider it a contained (thin) story whose strenght relies mostly on its swarming congeries of visual details, plot holes and paranoid ambiguities that don't need to be clarified at all. Actually I find quite hard to define it a traditional movie, as I prefer to think about it as an emotive sandbox or a sparkling acquarium where I can see my irrational thoughts swimming like weird fishes of the deep (a proof of the spiritual poignancy of this metaphor, again, can be appreciated in the love sequence of "EDOnism").

Nevertheless, my first reaction to the teaser of 19th December was warily optimistic. Its unsettling and enigmatic tone was quite close to what I've imagined keeping in mind all the news and behind-the-scene info, concept art and photos released over the last 6 months. Highly commendable is the way the Canadian director Denis Villeneuve and famed DOP Roger Deakins have homaged the slow pace of the scene of Deckard exploring the Bradbury building and the orange stillness of the first "Tyrell sequence" of the '82 movie (even though I suspect this new scene isn't set on Earth, or probably is a "memory" inserted in someone's brain related to the "desert" mentioned during the VK test of Holden) as well as the music sounds like a fitting Trent Reznor's rearrangement of some elements excerpted from the original Vangelis sonic dome. Despite I hoped this wasn't  just a remix conceived for the trailer but a little taste of the overall style of the final soundtrack, a couple days later the composer Johann Johannsson (who already collaborated with Villeneuve for "Sicario", "Prisoners" and "Arrival") stated that none of that belongs to his new score in progress.

 Ryan Gosling, aka "LAPD officer K", enters the deserted temple-casino that has become the new shelter of Deckard (and his four-legged companion).

Admittedly, so far the only element of the trailer that didn't really convinced me is the new scruffy and "Han Solo-esque" look of Deckard, but this appearence could find a "raison d'être" in the  more "low-profile" life style adopted by the retired replicant hunter. Even the new photos featured on the last Entertainment Weekly, clearly taken on set during the pauses between shooting (and probably not really representative of the final aesthetic), show a different, less grit and dark mood compared to the '82 movie.  It's all up to Villeneuve and who will decide the final cut to make sure this tonal shift will pay off on the big screen on the next 6th October, inheriting and enriching (not replicating) the poetic soul of the first masterwork. Otherwise, he knows its fate will be to get lost in time "like tears in snow".

"New York, a venture" on Indiehometv

It's time to celebrate since finally, after 20 months since the end of its post-production, the movie is available to watch on the new Indiehome TV.
All you have to do is register and enjoy the journey into a Manhattan you've never experienced before.
https://indiehometv.festhome.com/view_film/49935

NEW YORK, A VENTURE
Colors are flaming memories
A random incident that makes Adam lose every natural and artificial connections to the surrounding world, will be nothing but the first stage of a self-discovery through the darkness of memory. Only the verses of Amy, the enigmatic poetess of Central Park, will eventually enlighten the path of his quest with the Flames of a Vision that once split two lives, and now is about to reunite them in the cleansing whiteness of a stocking cap.

Directed, written and edited by Alessandro Fantini
Cinematography and special effects by Alessandro Fantini
Music by Alessandro Fantini

Cast:
Adam Clairfield: Craig Williams
Amy Bolnes: Kyrie Elieson
The lady of Central Park: Karen Goldfarb
The lunatic of Central Park: Henrik Kim Rehr
The first runner: Vincenzo Fantasia
The second runner: Said Raissi
Kevin Alcott: AFan Alessandro Fantini
Camera assistant at the Central Park Zoo: Lincoln Athas
Dialogue consultant: Craig Williams

Produced by AFAN PICTURES
Filmed in New Jersey and New York City from June to July 2014.

Go fund my multimedianic exhibition

Between 2009 and 2014 I've directed three indipendent movies in three different cities, "Nepente" filmed in Rome, "EDOnism" in Tokyo and "New York, a venture" in New York, that would have later formed what I've called "The Hidden Mind Cities trilogy".
Once back in Italy I decided to showcase in a very special way the trilogy and the artistic process directly and indirectly linked to its making.
After some research in Rome I found out that the art gallery "Segni Mutanti - Mutant Signs" has the perfect features for both screening the movies and exhibiting the artworks related to them and their themes.
Since the exhibition management and artworks transport have their unavoidable costs your support and sponsorship will be crucial in making this unique project come true. This isn't intended to be only a solo show or a multimedia extravaganza but an attempt at rendering a faithful display of the invisible cities founded by our brains and inhabited by our most unspeakable desires, fears and dreams. It will be also the opportunity to experience in its sensorial entirety the "multimedianic realm" of AFAN as never before.
Check out the campaign page on Gofundme.com for more details:
https://www.gofundme.com/aburbeincognita