S H A P E S
One flat, four young adults, the Universe on their laptops.
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This experimental narrative feature film collects scenes and episodes from a delirious and painful everyday life.
THE FULL FILM IS NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE YET
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But get in touch and I may as well find you a way to watch it.
Film Development notes:
(dated around 2014)
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"4 characters - they all wanna have sex but they can’t / don’t know how to do that
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Why?
Alienated, they lost human touch, they can’t connect too each other etc etc…
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How does that come through in the relationships and in the architecture of the house?
A FEATURE FILM BY
ROBERTO PRESTIA
It was a nightmare vision of four characters, clearly sexually repressed and unable to invest their energies constructively. Everyday episodes in the flat-share are disrupted by internet content breaking into reality and not allowing a linear story to begin.
I was in love with the idea of making the whole house look like a black room with no sense of space. I wanted it to feel like we were absolutely nowhere. No sense of time. Sometimes even the objects and characters would float in the darkness.
But in order to do that, I needed to actually transform my flat in Brixton into a film studio.
My meeting with photographer Oleg Micheyev, a real DIY genius, together with my artistic sibling and production designer Lili Lea Abraham, made the whole thing unexpectedly possible.
‘Shapes’ was born at a time when I could barely afford to go out of my flat and the Internet was my main window to the outside world.
I was in full antagonistic mode. I’d make spiritual enemies out of the state and the film industry, and then laugh at myself for how ridiculously self-righteous I sounded.
With a sarcastic spirit (and laughing myself to tears), I wrote a puzzle of grotesque and dramatic scenes depicting the life of a flat-share, not much unlike my own.
This puzzle was eventually edited into a feature film script and titled Shapes.
With great tenderness, I still remember one emblematic pre-production morning when Oleg and I met and I said:
“Oleg, I don’t know what to do. I have only £5 left until the end of the week.”
He cheerfully answered:
“Roberto, don’t worry. I have £10 left until the end of the month.”
And merrily we walked the streets and spent our last money on breakfast.
When the shooting was over, a whole different beast entered the space. The small budget we had raised through crowdfunding and equity investment was gone.
All that was left for me to do was to shut myself in my bedroom and personally curate the entire video and sound post-production.
Three years later, with the musical help of my brother Carlo Miles Prestia, I finally left my room with a complete cut of the film that I was happy with.
The longest three years of my life.
