ABSTRACT:GROOVE BRINGS BUILDING TO LIFE

Urban Motion project unveiled at Milan International Film Festival

Short film festivals are always great for finding new, inspiring work. But usually they're pretty formulaic - lots of films screened inside a darkened cinema. However, the biggest film at this year's Milan International Film Festival from Italian creative agency abstract:groove wasn't screened in the cinema at all - it was projected onto it.

Building Urban Motion used light and music to transform the Arcobaleno cinema in Milan's Viale Tunisia into an architectural hallucination.

With its pulsing colours and static, flickering windows, the film almost made the building come alive - precisely the aim of director Luigi Pane. "I did not want a plain and simple installation on the façade, I wanted to create the idea that the façade lived its own dreams on the surface," he explains. "Together with the team at abstract:groove, we imagined this surreal form of life in a R.E.M phase, which is a phase in your sleep where oneiric [dream] activity is at its fullest."

The project came about when a friend approached abstract:groove with some impressive new projection equipment. He had the technology but no content to play on his new tools, which allow people to link more than one projector and project onto 3D surface.

"Needless to say it was an invitation we could not refuse, so we wrote out the concept for the video installation," explains producer Mauro Mastronicola. "A few days later we found out about the MIFF awards [Milan International Film Festival]. The screenings were expected to be in a cinema with a truly brilliantly designed façade, very sturdy, completely rationalist and on one of the city's main streets. It looked like it had fallen from the sky because it had nothing to do with the other buildings surrounding it. So we showed the project at the Festival as though it was in the short film competition - the only difference was that the film had to be projected not inside but outside the theatre, because the main character was the actual façade of the building."

The festival directors were suitably impressed and awarded abstract:groove with a special prize. But for all the dreamlike, warped serenity, the film wasn't without challenges. The team had to persuade the tenant of the building in front of the theatre to let them install 200 kilos of projector equipment, plus video crew.

Following Urban Motion's success in Milan, the team plan to develop the project. "We hope to create similar projects in other places or worldwide, maybe even telling less abstract stories that involve actors," says Mastronicola. "It could be a new type of cinema."