LEVEL 05

Gabriele, the protagonist of the short film, against his wife’s
will agrees to take part in an experiment on a new type of
videogame based on augmented reality and on a revolutionary
neural interface. This choice will throw the protagonist into an
infernal spiral where he will endure a mortal experience,
trapping him in a loop with no way out. Only at the end do we
understand that behind it all is an unscrupulous C.E.O. and
Gabriele’s own wife Sara who are determined, despite the
disappointing results obtained in the experiment, to go ahead
with the creation of this lethal videogame.
This short film was created with the sole purpose of entertainment,
with the desire to create an entertaining work. Obviously
it is up to the public to interpret it in the way they wish. Personally
I found it interesting to develop the film as a type of
condemnation of the alienation into which the devices of our
time like smart phones or tablets have thrown us, to the point
of turning us into sociopaths. The compulsion to possess,
store and objectify every moment is an integral part of our
contempory anxieties which includes the mania for digitilizing
everything which leads us to lose and cancel the atmosphere
of the real, from which evidently we wish to escape. It’s an
accepted fact that the use of computers, smart phones,
tablets, televisions and videogames is a constant in our lives,
they permit us to live multiple experiences at an emotional and
rational level. These instruments amplify the range of our
actions, generating a parallel dimension to our physical
existence. In the film, in agreement with the author Roberto
Tomeo, I exasperated this aspect by giving the protagonist a
neural interface so as to make him and the machine one and
the same. Emotions, pain, joy, anxiety, happiness: everything is
lived in real time and amplified in a sort of modern medieval
torture. The film is set in the eighties at the dawn of the home
computer technology, those computers, alas, that we all know
and use daily.