NFTS 2014 Directing Fiction graduate Rose Glass (pictured left) has been selected by Giorgio Armani to direct a short film that represents the London section of a prestigious international project ‘Films of City Frames'.
The Armani initiative, created in collaboration with Rai Cinema, seeks to connect with the world of cinema through the universe built around Frames of Life. Directors from six of the best film schools in the world have been selected make short films from London, New York, Los Angeles, Rome, Paris and Hong Kong.
Giorgio Armani gave each school the task of selecting the most promising talents from their courses. These students then had to create short films based on a defined brief: to narrate the fragments of life, emotions, signs and sights that are captured and filtered through the eyewear collection, Giorgio Armani Frames of Life.
The NFTS film is being made by NFTS graduates using the School's world-class facilities. Filming is due to start this month with delivery to Armani in June. The NFTS graduates involved are:
Rose Glass - Writer/Director
Franziska Lindner - Producer
James Blann - Cinematographer
Manuela Lupini - Editor
Jonas Jensen - Sound Designer
Arran Price - Composer
Other non-NFTS crew are:
Elena Riccabona - Production Designer
Alice Whiting - Costume and Styling
Rose Glass, who graduated from the NFTS in February 2014, said: "To move on to a project like this straight after graduating is a fantastic opportunity for all of us! I'm really excited about the prospect of working on something which, while still narrative fiction, is far closer to the worlds of commercials and fashion films than anything I have made before"
Film Director Paolo Sorrentino has enthusiastically participated in this initiative and selected Piero Messina, his assistant and a graduate of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, to direct the pilot in which the Oscar winning Director himself is the main character. The video, produced by Indigo Film, is currently online at www.framesoflife.com and on the Armani Facebook page. Messina directed this thrilling and lyrical short film inspired byLouis Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, and includes unreleased sequences from Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty.
Films of City Frames acts as a platform for recognising emerging talents, allowing them to partner with Giorgio Armani eyewear – a product always greatly beloved by the fashion designer himself, who transformed them into true fashion accessories. In this project, Armani eyewear defines the faces of the characters and an instrument through which to observe reality, capture sensations and experience adventures in different cities that are the sets for the six short films.
From mid-March, the different production stages of the short films will be described online in a dedicated area at www.framesoflife.com and shared on the Armani social media networks. Films of City Frames will be a visual and narrative collage that uses individual points of view as a filter through which to capture the compelling richness of modern day cities.
Films of City Frames is the latest stage of the Frames of Life project started in 2010 with the objective of narrating through the medium of film real life stories that all embody a constant shared element, eyewear. These are objects that are impossible to be separated from, and act as instruments to intensively capture the nuances in each moment. Giorgio Armani chose the partner Rai Cinema, a subsidiary of Gruppo Rai and a leading company in the Italian cinema industry, to supervise the creation of the short films throughout their production phases, from evaluating the scripts, to editing and post-production.
