Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.
Giulio Bertelli's Agon (2025) is now streaming exclusively on MUBI.
AGON: FILM AS INVESTIGATION, STORYTELLING AS PRACTICE
A part of me writes scripts to design where filmmaking can exist as a practice to develop spaces, instruments, garments, tools, et cetera.
Fictional storytelling as a frame to imagine, stress test, and evaluate prototypes before they can contribute to our collective process of transforming reality.
ἀγών (agōn): ancient Greek word for competition, conflict, struggle, used in various fields: sports, military, literary and legal.
LUDOJ 2024: An imagined Olympic Games deprived of live audience where sport events take place within soundstages designed to feature a new layer of information: sound.
AGON: Simulated warfare, real pain. Poetry, organic matter, and technical apparatus share the storytelling space.
- How it feels to not be able to do what you want to do
- Measuring everything: performance, tools and preparation
- The credibility of documentary plunges into fictional narrative
- Blurred reality; you must focus to explore it
- Wide shot: pattern recognition at macro scale
- Extreme close-up: detailed investigation of specific processes
- Intersection between organic matter and technical apparatus
Explorer of actions: crafting the interface between the frailty of humankind and technology.
Emotional saturation: speed and pressure blending into one another.
Neorealismo tecnologico: hard human emotional journeys set sail like ships over a sea of technology where at times waves breaks over the deck.
Above: Diagram for climax - Judo as a dance.
Above: Teaser for guerra olimpica - Nedo controller.
Above: Ultem boilingblock 02 - GR10K hunting uniform.
Above: Thermal decoder MK1 - Falconetti's joypad.
Above: On set with Satoshi Fujiawara - Akta, pasta with lentils.
Above: Acoustic camera judo mocap - Ludoj camera crew.
Above: Ludoj 2024 logo - Animated Nadezhda Durova.