Tea time with Fok Nabo Distorio

An interview with Francesco Rosso, director of Fok Nabo Distorio

 Your film is based on extracts from “Liivaterade Raamat”, composed by Liis Viira. How did you decide to construct images around this music?

Since I built myself a light-box (for animating with oil paint on glass) I’ve started to play with anything I could find around me. So I got quite soon a clear idea of how I wanted my work to look like. During the same period I was enjoying many Estonian contemporary classic music concerts in Tallinn, which were really inspiring in a visual matter. Liis Viira is a talented young composer and animator, and after listening to her works I decided that “Liivaterade Raamat” would be the right piece to work on.

 Following this, how was the choice to use animation made?

I did this work as part of my MA in animation, therefore the medium itself was required. In addition to this I wouldn’t imagine any other medium to investigate a musical piece with so much freedom.

 What techniques did you use? The objects used? How did you film these animated shapes?

I did use stop-motion under the camera with multiple layers of glass. The work is structured mostly on three actions: animating the objects/paint, animating the light-sources and the manual camera work.

The objects involved are whatever I could find in the atelier, metal rings, clock pieces, lenses themselves etc..mostly circular shapes.

 Did you write down ideas for the setting or a guiding principle beforehand, or on the contrary, did you improvise during the recording?

I did experiment a lot before reaching the visual result I was looking for, then I kept the project frozen for about two years (the time I needed to animate “Must Seeme-Black Seed”) and after gaining more understanding of the animation medium I shot Fok Nabo Distorio in three weeks, purely improvised.

 Were the optical effects achieved by using lenses or digitally during post-production?

Color and optical effect are all achieved under the camera by using many layers of optical lenses.

 Do you only work with video, or do you work with other media as well?

I do work with different mediums as painting, analog photography, printing and illustration. Animation seems to be the only medium that carries all of the others together at once, therefore I’m experimenting a lot and enjoying what I’m learning.

 What are your film and pictorial influences?

The main influence is the visual material I’ve been gathering since many years from life-experiences and travels.

I do like also a lot of works from different people:

Film-wise I would say Walter Ruttmann, Len Lye, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Sergei Eisenstein and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Pictorial-wise I would mention Antonio López García, David Hockney, Karin Mamma Andersson and Luc Tuymans.

 Do you have any other art projects planned?

I’m constantly working on something, at the moment I’m starting a self-produced animated short-film and an animated music-video, as well as a series of monotypes involving motion.