A film by GIORGIO FERRERO and FEDERICO BIASIN
SYNOPSIS
Van is a floorhand, the maintenance man on an oil rig. He works in the desert, at a large oilfield in Texas. Danilo is the chief engineer of a freighter. He spends all his days in the heart of the vessel where a humongous engine resides. Andrea is a scientist. He has lived his whole life between mathematical formulae and the silence of the anechoic chamber. Vito has spent half of his life looking after slot machines. Today he is in charge of an immense reinforced-concrete pit for waste. These men, unwittingly, provide the basis for the whole sequence of creation, transport, marketing and destruction of the objects that feed our bulimic lifestyle. The objects that we think we need every day begin and end their journey inside isolated and eerie industrial and scientific locations. These men are monks in temples of steel and concrete and carry out the same mechanical rituals every day in silence and solitude, sharing the space with their own phantoms. She and He are an ordinary couple. They have spent their life accumulating stuff to the point of saturation. They grew up in the boom years of commercial television, and they are the first generation to have been freed from it by the internet. Today they are in their forties and are looking for a way out. She and He are us. And we have never heard about them.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
This movie is dedicated to ourselves who could not endure a life without collecting useless objects, to ourselves, bulimic of plastics and noises and afraid of silence. It’s dedicated to ourselves who fall asleep with Netflix in our ears hoping that night might fall without notice, to us, who accept the idea that life can go before but not that objects can survive us. This film is a way of dispelling our lifestyle from which we can not escape in any way.
Beautiful things is a journey into our consumption ‘bulimia’. The many objects we accumulate and we believe to be essential begin their production cycle in silent secluded industrial and scientific sites. Van, Danilo, Andrea and Vito are monks inside temples of send, steel and concrete. They repeat the same liturgy every day. We don’t even know that they exist. Van, Danilo, Andrea and Vito for the first time will be able to meet and look virtually in the face of the audience to whom they have devoted a whole life of work. The film was written and directed with a musical approach, like a score where notes and images are conceived together. Words, music, sounds are part of the same language and carry a single symphonic tale The very short slice of daily life that opens every act is the photograph of our life, our home, our terrace, our objects, our melancholy. This film is a way of escaping a lifestyle from which we can find no way out. In the film we have tried to express all our sadness, the urgency of the need to go back to breathing in silence, free from the constriction of a life swallowed up by noise. This is our howl and we have tried to turn it into a song.
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Giorgio Ferrero is a Turinese composer, director and photographer. Together with Federico Biasin and Rodolfo Mongitore, he runs the multidisciplinary studio MYBOSSWAS where he is creative director. He has composed soundtracks for dozens of films, theatrical performances and installations.
He also composed music for the works of Paolo Giordano, Daniel Gaglianone, Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio, Stephen Fingleton, Marzia Migliora, among others.
He has created visual and sound art installations for Bordeaux Biennal, MAXXI Museum, Lisbon Experiementa Design Biennal, Palazzo Madama in Turin, Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin, Museo del tessuto in Prato.
He has realized graphic displays, photographic campaigns and commercials for publishers and
brands like Condé Nast, Mondadori, Il Corriere della Sera, Einaudi, Nike and Alfa Romeo.
FILMOGRAPHY
2010, Pietro (Music composer, Daniele Gaglianone)
2011, Sette opere di misericordia (Music composer and sound designer, Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio)
2011, Polvere (Music composer, Niccolò Bruna, Andrea Prandstaller)
2011, Ruggine (Music composer, Daniele Gaglianone)
2012, Nozze d’Agosto (Sound designer, Andrea Parena)
2013, Riverbero (Co-director and music composer, short movie)
2014, Survivalist (Music composer, Stephen Fingleton)
2014, Pequenas Mentiras Piadosas (Music composer, Niccolò Bruna)
2015, I Ricordi del fiume (Sound designer, Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio)
2016, Le ultime cose (Sound designer, Irene Dionisio)
2016, Jardines de Plomo (Music composer, Alessandro Pugno)
2016, Holden (Screenplay, director, music composer, short movie)
2017, Ferrante Fever (music, Giacomo Durzi)
2017, Denoise (Screenplay, co-director, music composer, VR short movie)
2017, Beautiful Things (Screenplay, co-director, music composer, feature film)
Cast
Screenplay and direction Giorgio Ferrero
Cinematography and co-direction Federico Biasin
Music and Sound Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore
Cameras & Editing Giorgio Ferrero, Federico Biasin, Enrico Aleotti, Filippo Vallegra
Production MYBOSSWAS
With:
Van Quattro (Usa)
Danilo Tribunal (Philippines)
Andrea Pavoni Belli (Italy)
Vito Mirizzi (Switzerland)
Vittoria De Ferrari Sapetto (Italy)
Andrea Valfrè (Italy)