Broken Cinema

By Giscard Tebbitt

Right now Im wondering what kind of significance being thrown out of a lobby of a plastic surgery clinic in London during rush hour can mean. This was supposed to be a film shoot along the Picadilly line, but has disintegrated into a pushing match between the clinics' security and a filmmaker who thinks this is the best way to capture a fantastic film performance is by barging into a plastic surgery operation and tickling the practitioner. A reputation like this seems a good way to kill your career but not when you don’t consider what you do to be a career. ‘I arranged this so it would be an in the moment shoot, if I kissed their ass and begged for a few moments of their time we would have got less than nothing, it would have been a waste of tape’. It is a very hot day and the sidewalk feels very lonely during Halloween week. ‘Im being persecuted for doing something different, we’re being covertly filmed 24/7 so I don’t understand whats even considered private anymore, making a movie is like a drug, todays flavor was smut.’

Fabrizio Federico could never be considered half-hearted. As we sit in a Brick Lane café he spots two beautiful girls dressed in leather and within moments they're talking about Japanese abortions and skateboards and how they make a beautiful poetic image. ‘I could never retire, there's too much out there, this isn’t a job for me, I hope I never make any money from my work, Im gonna die broke but I’ll have had a good time reveling in ecstacy and screams, it’s not gonna matter in the end as long as the wrong side of the brain gets captured .’

After starting a house fire at the age of five and escaping a grizzly death Fabrizio’s life has revolved around travel. ‘Italy was like the wild west where I lived, there would be gang fights everyday, rocks and bricks and tree branches used as whips, we had sex in class, I got caught going down on a girl during math class, I saw a guy get hit by a truck while he was on his bike, and while he lay dying these kids stole his bike, it was a fun place to grow up.’ The temptation to ask about when he started to fall in love with cinema creeps in, even though I’ve been warned about asking about influences. ‘I love all types of cinema, but people think Im some art house snob, I fucking hate hipsters, they mutilate cultures, I get compared to Harmony Korine a lot as if he invented underground cinema, he ripped off all of Jonas Meka’s moves. The first movie I fell in love with was Gremlins, I went weird later on when I moved to the U.S, they taught us about extrasensory perception, shamanism and religious cults. The Last Movie by Dennis Hopper changed my goddamn life, that and The Great Rock & Roll Swindle made me see cinema as an art form, a Tom Cruise movie is a fucking joke compared to My Own Private Idaho. Charlie Sheen has way more depth than a lot of those Hollywood cocksuckers, he’s more honest too. I don’t want no part in the film industry, they're a bunch of lying pigs and their bitter about how much money they're losing thanks to the internet. Well, real artists are putting their work up for free anyway. I really relate to people like Van Gogh and Donald Cammell, I admire how they escaped all the bullshit that comes along with being an artist, their estates have to deal with all the bloodsucker lawyers long after their dead and gone.’

Fabrizio might have all the right credentials, but he’s not a superstar director or for that matter even know above the film underground. They’ve certainly been cautious about screening his debut

feature film Black Biscuit. ‘It’s more fun showing the movie at a LSD freakout or a happening, that’s the movies natural habitat. Cinemas are boring. Richard Ayoade’s Submarie is considered an edgy film these days, it sucks, I feel like Im living in a headless politically correct, bad 50’s TV show re-run. The talent of the Pink8 manifesto is that it brings back the Punk DIY energy and guillotine’s all these safe university film students who are prepared to blow anyone for a bit of film funding. I made Black Biscuit for £500 which was raised by me doing some nude life modelling and donating blood, it was shot on mobile phones and children’s cameras, no script, I had no clue what I was doing and I learnt from making huge mistakes. The film was an experiment, an adventure in finding street superstars in the gutter.’

After making our way to the Horse Hospital, the Serpentine gallery, and the ICA it’s a tour of all the hot spots in the new hip underground film scene in London that has been seeping and creeping into the mainstream with some help by grenade like statements from Fabrizio during the festival season. Calling the BAFTA’s a ‘bukake convention’ and the film Gravity as ‘worse than rape’ drew a deep crack between the mainstream and the underground. ‘I don’t hate anyone but Im talking from an artistic perspective, what’s the point in me saying everythings amazing all the time, money is a farce, I have better things to do than waste my time chasing after money, who needs them. I love what Shia LaBeouf did with the paper bag stunt, it’s like celebrity doesn’t really matter anymore, there are no more gods in TV land. I wish Lars Von Trier would stop wasting his time with actors though. My next film Pregnant is about how a lack of rituals and initiation in todays society has created an army of Kiddults. I know how to find happiness in suffering, the film deals with escaping modern society and how technology addiction has created a Pennywise clown fear of missing out on Tweets and Facebook posts. Everyones glued to their phones these days. I want to concentrate on all the beauty that surrounds us, the desert people of the world.’

Sitting outside the BFI Southbank along the river Thames feels a bit like sitting outside the royal palace, similar to an exile or banishment, as if he’s denied the keys to the kingdom, as if it’s not his time. We’re surrounded by mimes and jugglers and tourists from all across the world, an Elvis impersonator croones Suspicious Minds but still he doesn’t take his gaze off of the steel October sun . ‘I do feel like Im on a mission, forget about selling out I live in trick or treat land, I even donated a digital file copy of Black Biscuit to the BFI, and it’s now in their archives. Maybe it’s like giving someone an apple with a razor blade stuck in it. My work is like a beautiful contemplative non-linear love affair, or like burning a book.’