Where does the day begin, where does the night end?
The camera tenderly captures the fleeting moments of daily life. It is unclear whether night is setting in or it is the blue hour of the early morning. It is always a little dark in the film, and there is always a light shining somewhere, bathing the situation in its own special aura. We see the store owner opening up his business in the dark as the camera glides over the photos of his children in the garish light of the neon tubes. A young woman in bed is woken up by her flashing phone, and in the darkness of the room her dog gleefully jumps onto the duvet. A couple is sitting in front of a fireplace; the lens focuses alternately on the flames, the couple’s feet, the tender caresses of the two lovers. An old man is sitting in the garden, smoking. Suddenly he stands up, switches a table lamp on, goes to the typewriter and starts typing.
The Italian filmmaker and photographer Gianluca Vassallo has captured these at times melancholic, at others joyful, and sometimes hopeful, intimate scenes, these subtle moments, and sensitively assembled them to make the short film “Fare Luce”. Only an aficionado who recognizes the iconic products which crop up here and there will realize that this is actually a commissioned piece for luminaire manufacturer Foscarini. Yet Vassallo does not give them a stage; rather they are woven into the brief moments he captures in the lives of the protagonists from Sardinia.
“Normally a design object sits on a plinth or a stage, but our job is making people understand our lamps are not just a trophy but part of real life. They change our perspective, enable movement – in real rooms, with coffee on the stove,” explained Carlo Urbinati at the Milano Design Film Festival, where “Fare Luce” was screened for the first time.
This is not the first time Foscarini has worked with Gianluca Vassallo. Indeed, for the shots in the series “Postcards of light” Gianluca Vassallo captured the delicate glow of the luminaires in his images – cityscapes of Milan, Stockholm, New York and a summer project from Sardinia, that entice the observer to take a closer look. With the film “Fare Luce”, Foscarini is continuing its corporate culture of fostering its very own approach to its products. Not just in the manufacture and development of its luminaires, but in its entire corporate culture. And that is only possible because a smart mind like Carlo Urbinati is bold enough to tread his own path – to create, independently of all the advice offered by marketers, a world that takes shape in dialog with designers and artists, and in so doing creates relationships that open up entirely new perspectives.
