Experiencing Interruptions?

Home Smart Home

A 9-channel film installation became an experimental short. The work investigates the smart-human intersection looking at the real impact that the usage of smart devices might have on individuals. The set up resembles a CCTV Control Room: all the screens exhibit a set of ordinary daily life activities within a smart domestic environment, in which the human is surveilled by his own smart objects. The spotlight is on the psychology and behaviour of the (data producer) male character that is being observed, measured, analysed and eventually directed by his own smart tools within his very own ‘private’ space. The result is a dystopian scenario which displays the hypothetical conflict between the human and the machine once they get even closer. Our human experience is ultimately extended by increasing the control we have on our private and social environment, but the boundaries between ‘being in control’ and ‘being controlled’ are completely blurred.

  • Marica De Michele
    Director
  • Marica De Michele
    Writer
  • Matteo Reza Azchirvani
    Writer
  • Marica De Michele
    Producer
  • Matteo Reza Azchirvani
    Key Cast
    "Unnamed"
  • Vincent Van Dijck
    Sound Designer
  • Janis Melderis
    Animation Designer
  • Matteo Reza Azchirvani
    Cinematographer
  • Marica De Michele
    Camera Operator
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Student, Other
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 17 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 25, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    800 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Netherlands
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Design Academy Eindhoven
  • UK TREND BRIEFING 2018_the Future Laboratory
    London
    United Kingdom
  • SHORT to the Point
    Bucharest
    Romania
    July 31, 2019
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • SHORT to the Point
Director Biography - Marica De Michele

Marica De Michele (Locorotondo, Apulia, 02/09/86) is an Italian freelance filmmaker, editor and set designer based in the Netherlands. She approached for the first time photography, video making and editing during an exchange study program in Visual Arts at Sabanci Universiteti in Istanbul. After she obtained her BA in Set Design from Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, she started working as an assistant scenographer for independent theatre companies, but she also kept experimenting on her own with photography and video-editing. In 2011 she attended a Photography Reportage Class by Dario De Dominicis in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Thanks to her multi-disciplinary approach, in 2018 she obtained another BA in Man & Communication from Design Academy Eindhoven. Trough these years of study, constant search and research, new experimentations and never-ending personal reflections, Marica slowly realised her devotion for the audiovisual. During her internship period in New York, while assisting the absurdist photographer Alison Brady and the activist poet and performer Jamie Olowale Kosoko, Marica proclaimed film as her main medium. Since then, by maintaining the same self-taught approach, her movie production has grown exponentially. Currently, while developing her own artistic voice, Marica mostly collaborates with artists, performers, designers and musicians.

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Director Statement

In close touch with theatre and performing arts, my work is driven by an obsessive research for fragmented, unspoken narratives acting as a creative tool to gain (and produce) experiential knowledge. Fascinated by the conflict hidden among reality and its representation, my work examines the mutability of the body-self, with a strong tendency to play with transfiguration and exaggeration. Such “quest for conflict” is often situated within human body contours, volumes, gestures and limitations, where space and matter are constantly involved aiming to contain, extend, influence and disassemble.