Lots going on behind curtains at the moment. Just finished a fun augmented reality animation project for Brooklyn Brewery which will be premiered at one of their events this month. I'll put up videos of the project soon after.



Meanwhile I've used all the rest of my time (what a delightful oxymoron) working on a private commission of a new tryptic. Check out a little timelapse of a detail:

Over the course of 2016 YouTube launched the 6-seconds unskippable ad format before videos. To promote the format to brands, agencies and creatives they commissioned several filmmakers to create a 6 seconds short film that would be screened at the YouTube House at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The creative brief was completely open.

Here's an illustration I made for my friend Zach Mortensen's side project Invisible Supply Co., which provides little stickers you can put in front of your computer's camera so that the bad people don't spy on you. Yup.

MTV asked me to create four idents, leaving me complete creative freedom. Only requirement was to show the logo at the end somehow.

This is a tryptic I recently did for a private commission. See a bigger image and details here.

Just shot a couple tv ads for MTV Snapchat.

Been hard at work editing and gathering material for my new feature documentary, Archaeology of the future. Can't wait to be able to share something with you.

The fake apartment video I directed via Rokkan for Humane Society is finally out. The campaign is aimed at raising awareness about the broken promises Costco made when they declared they would stop selling eggs coming from caged chickens. I hope this campaign makes a difference. UPDATE: By the end of 2015, Costco went cage-free! Read about their decision here.

Last night Ghost Robot hosted their third Grand Quarterly party, and my illustrated journal "Yo solve Cuba" had the honor to be the highlight of the night. We exhibited all the original pages (which are up for viewing until end of December) and we also printed a limited edition of 50 copies of the book itself. Come buy at our Williamsburg office or buy online!



As an additional bit of fun I put together a small live drawing performance, during which me, Nico Casavecchia and Fons Schiedon collaboratively worked on a drawing in front of the audience. I'll soon post the final result and a timelapse of it. thanks to everyone who came, it was fun!

I can't believe i found someone who gave me a wall to paint in Brooklyn. well, it happened and now it's out there.

I have uploaded some stuff in the STATIC section: some nudes and two new sketchbooks. By the way, did you know that hummingbirds beat their wings 60-80 times per second?

Last March I had the opportunity to help on a campaign for the Humane Society, aimed at raising awareness about puppy mills. I got to hold lots of puppies that kept distracting me and the whole crew. Very unprofessional of them. I mean the puppies. Click below and take a look and spread the word!

Hard to explain how humbled I am to have had the chance to direct the awesome track "Can't do without you" for the awesome artist Caribou. Click on image to watch- working on putting together some behind the scenes material.

Let's kick off 2015 with a post about a mural I just did, shall we? The piece was made only with pencil, and it's now on the walls of Sueo Studio, a graphic design studio based in my hometown Modena, Italy. Who wants a mural done at their office/apartment/secret orgy basement dungeon? I'm available for commissions, just email me.

Extremely pleased to announce that I am now part of a new creative family, Ghost Robot. They produce feature films, documentaries, commercials, music videos, short films, comic books, zines, wearable products and much more, and that's what I'm looking forward to be doing with them from now on. go check the works on their website, happy to be in the company of such talented directors.

very excited to finally be able to share pictures of my first-ever published graphic novel, A trumpet and a feather.

You can read the comic in its entirety online, and if you decide you want to own a physical copy you can buy it at the publisher's website, Terracava.

turns out that with the priceless help of my friend Enrique Grullon, who is a wonderful web developer, I managed to see the light at the end of my website redesign. it's 4am in the morning so my fingers are only going to follow my lead for a couple more lines, but before they run out of juice i'd like to welcome you here, and invite you to explore all my works, who have been reorganized in a hopefully clearer and more navigable way. you may still bump into a few little bugs, and if that is the case I apologize in advance and tomorrow morning i swear i will make 10 flexes more as a penalty for that.

oh, and i was forgetting: a big thanks to my friend and photographer Stefano Galli for letting me use the photograph of me for the homepage. It's from an upcoming project we have been working together for a while now, stay tuned.

Hey italian people, have you seen the new season of the Pascalistan tv series? I directed all the episodes on location in Kazakhstan.

what is the superlative of embarassing? mmh i'll just make one up right now: i'm at my most embarassedstest because i just realized i haven't posted any news on this blog since last, uhm... May?! holy shit. that is ridiculous. let's see if i can make amend for that. the first and foremost reason i haven't updated this blog is because last year i started using Instagram, and basically everything worth sharing with the world i posted there and not here anymore. so, if you want to be updated regularly on what i'm up to, feel free to head to my Instagram account and silently stalk the hell out of me. i would love that very much.

then. what else. oh, yes, a minor detail: i moved to New York City. the big apple is now the place i call officially home, and you have no idea how happy that makes me. 4 years in Los Angeles were fantastic, but it was time for a change and a nice little kick in the ass to my own life in general, so here i am, and i'm not leaving anytime soon. which means, if you're in NYC and reading this and want to connect, feel free to do so, i would love to meet fellow artists from this city. even if you're passing through is fine, i like tourists as well.

about my work in specific: been doing so many things i don't know where to start. first of all, i've been drawing an insane amount. i'm almost done with a new comic, titled The Uncanny, which will see the light of day soon, hopefully. then i have a few short film project which are in editing stage, but i don't really feel like talking about them yet. then i was in Buenos Aires this month to shoot a couple commercials through Publicis agency in Lyon and the company that now represents me in France, Cake Films. now i'm gearing up to go to Kazakhstan to direct some episodes of the new season of the show Pascalistan , which is going to very likely be an experience that will shatter any kind of expectations i have and eat the pieces and spit them back at me when i least expect it. so that's good.

and last but not least, i put together a little montage of my works, just to put a dot on the i after many years of work and give you a quick idea of what i've been doing since i seriously realized that making moving images is the best job in the fucking world.

here are the spots i did for the San Diego Zoo. behind the scenes pictures coming at some point, for now just have fun trying to guess how we got those nice performances out of the little creatures.

last month I directed a web spot for UGG, and it came out today:



and right after that job i jumped on a campaign for The San Diego Zoo, which was fun and will be airing on California TV channels soon. here's a little peek behind the scenes:

being VERY busy these days, but found some time to make an illustration.

i returned from Stuttgart and this is what I got to do in the two days that were given to us to create the piece. Graphite on paper. again, the drawing is based on a text from Uli Hannemann. it is taken from a series of interviews conducted by writer Tobias Hulswitt over the year, in which he asked people to give him their take on how the world works. this was Uli's text:

Everything in the universe, whether it's a comet or a groundhog, is permanently seeking something to hold on to in the midst of chaos - the essential activity of all things in the vast nothingness: the stars seek a stable place in their galaxies, the planets snuggle up to the larger stars like half-starved hookers and the moons buzz around the planets like flies on shit.
On the Earth the very same process continues as well: rivers cling desperately to their riverbeds, trees to the ground and animals to some sort of social system. Some animals may do service as pets, trusting their needs and hopes to the allegedly more competent human species - actually the most incompetent one of all.
Because unlike animals in the wild, people have a wild fear of death. Like a pitifully whimpering koala bear clinging to a burning eucalyptus tree in fright, people cling to their lives with touchingly stupid futility. In desperation, people clutch at shreds of meaning like war, sports, family, friendship, consumer culture, religion, sweets, drugs or love. All of which inevitably fail them, because they all have one common weakness: each person's absurd belief in their self-importance, however it's expressed.
For me personally, what helps most has always been alcohol, a remedy I recommend especially to younger folks, and one that I can never praise enough. Actually, the world's most intelligent animal is the silverfish. With earnest majesty it inches slowly over the floor tiles, raising its wise head now and then for a sniff. Sometimes the silverfish finds food, sometimes shit, or even sometimes a bit of love. But nothing that ties it down with obligations. It doesn't look for something to hold on to, because it knows that no such thing exists. With a friendly salute it hurries on, carrying the big picture - if not in its head - at least in its heart.

a big thanks to Buro Achter April and the other artists for the great time. by the way, the drawing is for sale, please contact the Strzelski Galerie if interested.





and here's a little shaky video to show a little bit more details before i am sent proper pictures:

i just made a Valentine's card, click on image, come on, I love you.

traveling time again! i was invited along with other four extremely talented illustrators to participate in a live drawing session in Stuttgart, Germany. very very very excited very. please come if you're in the area. here's details:

"THE WORLD IN YOUR MIND"

LORENZO FONDA Los Angeles, USA // EDWIN ROSTRON London, UK // MARIE-MARGAUX TSAKIRI-SCANATOVITS London, UK // MAGALI CHARRIER London, UK // ULE BARCELOS Stuttgart, Germany

How does the world work? For several years, Tobias Hulswitt has been asking people to explain the world to him. Buro Achter April has turned one of these theories into an animated short film titled "Undercurrents". Five other internationally renowned animation artists will be interpreting some of the other theories live at Strzelski Galerie on 23 February 2013. Three of Hulswitt's interviewees will also be on hand to present their explanations of the world and visitors are invited to take part in short interviews and share their thoughts on the subject.

Vernissage Feb 23rd 2013 at 7 pm Exhibition until Feb 28th 2013 Strzelski Galerie

In cooperation with Strzelski Galerie // MFG Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Wurttemberg mbH // Film Commission Region Stuttgart

my time here in Italy is almost up, ready to go back to LA. but before i will swing by Istanbul where i will give a lecture at Mixer Gallery about my works. if you're in Istanbul come swing by and say hello. below is the flyer i made for the event, click on it for bigger size.

item #167 popping out from my archives, which i'm not sure i ever shared: a skateboard design i did as part of the Tetris Effect project. read more infos here.

alright, let's see what's up with me as of today.
last month I shot two commercials for UGG. here's the first one:



like tradition requires, i had to go somewhere to recharge creative juices and wisely spend the money i just earned, so i decided to go to Istanbul to visit my friend Zamoc, who was in town doing some research. the city is beautiful and people are full of energy. so much that they leave footprints on cement:



after Turkey a quick partying-with-friends stop in Venezia and then visa renewal in Milan, which means I can stay three more years in the States and keep doing silly videos with animals behaving like humans.
i also finally put my hands on the A4GOD book that has a contribution from me, and i guess it's time to share it with you people. click on image for full effect.

another one of my very serendipitous photographs.

social media! my film! hell yeah!
a very long due web presence for my new documentary film Archaeology of the future has finally happened, and i couldn't be more eager to share with you. please head to these three different places where you can have updates and infos about the project. and yeah, sorry, no synopsis yet.

Official website
Facebook
Twitter

see you there.

i finished my graphic novel, at last. it's called A trumpet and a feather and it's free to be read online.
very eager now to go back working on my film, lots of editing shooting researching monitoring begging digging to do.

in case you were wondering why this news section posts has been cluttered by posts of a silly/unrelated/procrastinating nature and not real work, is because i've been doing some real work, in the form of a graphic novel. or should i call it web comic, since i'll publish it online? let's just call it by its real name, A trumpet and a feather.
below is all i can share for now, please come back in a week or so for the published work.

i am not sure i have to write something every time i post something. something, by the way.

and here's for something completely different (well, not really): my friend Kirsten Lepore, who is an amazing director/animator, is applying the last touches to her new short film, which everyone is very much looking forward to. so why is this relevant to my website? because i will be in it. ah! well, not me, but one of my characters. not sure what Kirsten made me do, but sure it will make me look much cooler than what i really am. make sure you follow her and check out her new film when it premieres!
below is the character she made (on the right), my character from my film Megunica, and me, reflected on the dirty monitor, all together for a nice family picture.

hey everyone, my good friend Rom Alejandro is having a Kickstarter campaign to fund his next short film. go support, he's good.

a little scribble done by a Big Sur fire.

on the first day, several italian illustrators were asked to draw god.
on the second day, these illustrators said, let there be illustrations, and there were illustrations.
on the third day, it was decided a book was to be done with all the drawings, and the book was done, and it was named A4GOD.
on the fourth day, the book was chosen to be published, and there was the published book.
on the fifth day, you thought it would be awesome to buy the book, and there you were placing the order online.
on the sixth day, you said let there be a coffee table to put this awesome book on, and there was the coffee table.
on the seventh day, you saw how great of a decision you made by buying this book, and you put your feet on the coffee table and started finally browsing through the book.
and then all the weirdest shit happened.

why am i telling this story? because i made one of the illustrations in the book. watch a preview here and take a peek below at a detail of my contribution.
god bless you, dear paypal friend.

hey hey you yes you look here, yes, here, LOOK HERE I SAID, LOOK AT MEEE, HERE I AAAAM LOOK AT ME ME ME ME ME MEEEEE YES HERE GOOD YEAH KEEP LOOKING MEEE ME ME ME ME UNDERSTAND? MEEEEEEE YES ME ALRIGHT and then look at someone who's talented for real.

Knowledge is assembled by living organisms in order to organize the actual shapeless flow of experience as far as possible into reproducible experiences with relatively reliable connections between them. This means that the real world only manifests itself when our constructions fail. But as we can always only describe and explain the failure in those terms, which we have used to build the failed structures, a picture of the world, which we could make responsible for the failure, could never be conveyed to us.
Somewhat more metaphorical would be the following analogy: the captain of a ship has to cross straits he does not know and does not have a chart for nor navigational help such as a beacon, etc. on a stormy, dark night. In the circumstances only two things are possible: Either he sails into a cliff and loses his ship and his life; in the last moment of his life he realizes that the reality of the straits was not as he imagined and his course did not correspond with the actuality of the straits. Or he reaches the open sea; then he knows only that his course was accurate but no more. He does not know whether there could have been easier, shorter crossings than the one he blindly chose. And he does not know what the real condition of the straits was.

Ernst Von Glasersfeld, Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning

a little behind the scenes video from Baby Come Home Scissor Sisters video. (P.s: there's virtually no presence of my friend Luca Zamoc contribute, not sure how it did happen but just wanted to point out that without him the music video wouldn't exist, so there you go) - also, looks like the ancient art of videos stills selection has been long gone.

Davide Cattaneo, one of the skateboarders i went with to Sicily last september to shoot the first batch of my new documentary, is down with the project. and skateboarding. and Sicily. for life.

hi, my name is lorenzo fonda and i like to make little films with cheap phone applications that easily make everything look melancholic and stuff.

i am folding up my sleeves and getting back to work on my new film, and i couldn't help to step back a little and observe where i'm at in the process, and i thought that being a filmmaker is like getting on a plane to look at the world from another perspective.

you fly around and keep your eyes open, looking for a special moment or just some kind of inspiring view.
when that happens, it's all so beautiful and touching that out of sheer excitement you throw yourself out of the plane, to hopefully be closer and maybe touch and feel whatever interesting thing you saw. it's only after a few seconds that you realize that you are in the air and didn't put a parachute on. damn. so you keep falling and you start freaking out because you have jumped and can't go back to the safety of the plane's comfortable chairs. you look around and after some time you see a group of other skydivers falling as well, far away, and the only thing you can do to save yourself is try approaching them, to see if they can help you somehow. turns out they not only have a spare parachute, but they also give you hints about how to use it, when, and how to land. you gladly take the parachute, say thanks and goodbye and everyone goes back to attending their own fall.

so now you're there alone again, falling into this big void, and is actually pretty fucking exciting but you're aware that you're falling to your death, and that's the major source of anxiety of course. But at least now you know you have a parachute. Which you really never used before, but you have to trust that whatever those other skydivers gave you works, and whatever they told you is true.
so, based on that help you start planning how and when to open the parachute. but the more you fall, the more you realize you're getting ecstatic and you're loving the fall so much because you've never been in such a situation and the experience is making you reconsider so many things on so many different levels. so you're faced with a choice, either to open the parachute now and stop the fall and slow down and finally be safe, or you can wait to open the parachute at the latest moment you can, in order to enjoy as much as possible what this fall is offering, because the more you fall the more interesting it gets. after a few seconds of meditating, you decide to wait.

but with that decision comes back again the anxiety and the fear of what's coming towards you, which is certain death if you don't open the parachute in time or if you can't manage to open it at all. you start doubting if you made the right choice, and the fear starts turning into sheer terror. and along with that comes a wave of sensations, feelings and insights that you never would have come across if you opened the parachute way before. the terror makes you dig inside yourself for any hook that might keep you sane, and that digging is sublimated into consciousness and some sort of enlightenment, and that opens your mind to a number of ideas and connections as vast as the world coming at you. that's the moment that you were waiting for, when you conquer fear and that world coming at you turns from being your worst enemy to your best friend, and you embrace the moment and everything becomes clear and you finally understand why you stupidly jumped out of that plane in the first place.
that's the moment when you can open the parachute and focus on a safe landing.

when you land, maybe you break a leg or your waist or worse, but at least you made it alive. the skydivers that helped you along the fall gather around you, happy you made it and eager to listen to the story of the whole fall.
you're happy to share, they're happy to listen and tend to your wounds, and will be happy to share the story with other skydivers, and maybe there will be random people around that will be listening or that witnessed your fall and will maybe get excited about the story and maybe even in the reasons why you stupidly jumped out of a plane without a parachute, and maybe who knows, if you made it why can't they try themselves since it all sounds so FUCKING AMAZING.

that's what i feel making a documentary film is like.

here's my second Scissor Sisters video.

my thoughts go to the people who died in today's earthquake in the area around my hometown back in Italy. also, Andy Cameron passed away unexpectedly. what a great inspiration you were man. today was a shit day.

today i skated one of the best skate spots in the world, walked into a vulcano crater, visited an ice cave, saw a sunset solar eclipse from the edge of a meteor crater and wrote arguably my favorite treatment for a music video ever. today was a good day.

hey everyone, i am doing a cross country road trip and it's been incredible so far. currently in Albuquerque, working on a treatment and itching to go skate a very interesting spot.
meanwhile, my good friend Brad Hasse has released his last music video, and it's nothing short of amazing. i know i shouldn't post videos of other directors because they will steal my job, but what can you do, radness can't be stopped, so i guess i will just bow and present you the promo in all its glory. all of the silhouettes were done in camera. it's so hard nowadays to come up with some new in-camera technique, and that's why i think Brad's video stands out. oh, and by the way, he is looking for a music videos rep, so feel free to contact him or send him cherry pies.

this is just awesome, and if you don't get it i'm sorry for you.

finally! my limited edition screenprints are available for buying and hanging on your walls (or store them in a super secret Swiss bank vault). click here to see and hopefully buy them. thank you.

there you go, here is the first Scissor Sisters video.



and here's a small behind the scenes:

sooo, we delivered the first Scissor Sisters video (which will be premiering tomorrow) and now we're in NYC for post on the second one. after work, we dedicate ourselves to getting to know the city a little better. an interesting fact we discovered is that new york girls are many, they are incredibly beautiful and the ritual mating dances they do to attract males are really weird.

a page from my LA diary.

get your wallets ready

very happy to be sitting on a comfortable sofa in the editing bay after having shot both Scissor Sisters videos, with no racing against time and no dust getting into my lungs. aahh, such a good feeling. first video will have to be delivered soon, the other one needs a massive amount of post production love which will be given in NYC during the month of April.
luckily no animals or humans were hurt during filming (we had a few close calls, but let's leave that for the making of). so it's good, you know. below are a couple pics from the shoots.





and as a nice "oh-wow-look-at-this-coincidence-means-we're-going-in-the-right-direction" moment here's a picture of the wine we're sipping right now as the editor synchs some cuts to the lyrics:

postcards from a Scissor Sisters test shoot.

when i was about 11 i used to go with my mom to the public library. when there, we would set a rendezvous time and place, and each one would go attend their own business. she would go browse through books for her school teachings and personal readings, and i would go straight to the comics section, every time looking for the same letter. M. the ridiculous amount of anticipation i was feeling would be transformed into a cathartic experience if it turned out that a new book from Moebius had arrived. i would sit there and look at the drawings and be transported to a place so far away that i would always forget to go back for the rendezvous, and my mom would have to come pick me up (she knew where to find me of course).

"We artists can only go so far as the people can follow us. We are not alone, we are part of the system. We can take risks, but if you want to go to the peak of your consciousness, you may very well find yourself alone. Even if you know how to translate what you see, maybe only ten people will be able to understand what you tell. But, if you have faith in your vision, and retell it again and again, you will start noticing that, after a time, more people will begin to catch up with you."

rest in peace, and thanks for the endless inspiration.

Moebius * 1938 / 2012

here is a great blog completely dedicated to him and his work.

juopjmhklg ffsd fds ddwer wxc. hg. sorry, my hands were sweating a lot and i had to go wash them. looks like the universe doesn't only want me to take random serendipitous pictures in the street, it also seems it wants me to make videos for big pop bands. i will be directing not one, but two videos for Scissor Sisters. very excited.
by the way, the art director on one of the videos will be, you guessed it, my buddy Luca Zamoc. i know, boring. same collaborators all the time. but now i am starting to understand why directors work with the same people all the time: first, you just need a glance to understand each other. second, it's great to work with awesomely talented people. third, it's so damn fun. all this redundant gibberish was meant to be an introduction to Luca's new website. check it out.

dear Lord Jesus, i know you probably won't like this picture, but i wanted to thank your father for creating the universe and for letting it donate me such a serendipitous camera opportunity.

i was browsing through some old archives and stumbled upon this breasts cast i decorated for Keep A Breast Foundation, an awesome organization that uses art to promote awareness about breast cancer. unfortunately i can't recall the name of the lady whose breasts were used for the cast, but i think she was a professional surfer or something. anyway, it doesn't matter, this artwork was my personal tribute to boobs, and i felt it deserved an idea of Homeric proportions.

don't fuck with patriotic seagull's frontyard.

things are looking good.

inspiring story of the day:
a few days ago, this guy Josef Kristofoletti writes me asking me if i would be interested in having my film Megunica screened in Austin, Texas. the idea sounded good of course, but intrigued by his italian-sounding name, i indulged into a google session based on his name. turns out he's a quite talented artist in his own right, and one piece of his stroke me instantly, not only because of its appearance but particularly from where it was painted:



that paint covers the walls of the building that houses the Large Hadron Collider. if you don't know what is it, please educate yourself immediately.
having been under the fascinating spell of the whole LHC idea and project for quite a while, my mind was instantly blown, and i wrote back Josef telling him that of course i was ok with the screening, but what i was really interested in was how on earth did he manage to make a mural over the walls of the CERN building. what he told me is basically the archetype for every success story of believe-in-a-project-until-it's-done-no-matter-what.
in his own words: "it was a dream of mine and i thought it would be the best project i could come up with as an artist at that moment. then I proposed the idea to the physicists at CERN and a few of them thought it might be a good idea. then i was very stubborn and continued to fight for the project for about two years until it was finished. if you are a filmmaker then you know that sometimes you have to lie cheat and sweat blood to get something done ;-)"

now, what have you believed in today?

hanging in Italy to do work for my film. things are looking good but still faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from being done, and that's why we are looking for fundings. I know we haven't been telling what the heck the film is about yet, but if you are interested in helping out with the film, please get in touch with me.
meanwhile, National Geographic have started broadcasting the ad I did for their Big Cats Week campaign.

sketching during jam sessions brings good luck.

i created a page for the Warp20 NYC film i made last year, feel free to check it out. i have to warn you, it's a very not-instantly-gratificating 30 minutes clip, so if you feel trusty today please go on and watch.

just shot a small ad for National Geographic. The lead actor was so talented and natural that he just wouldn't take any direction. here's a video of us waiting for him to take his afternoon nap.

next week I will head to the east coast to participate in a dog sled race. after that, I will visit Rochester, NY where my film Megunica will be screened at the Little Theatres, in conjunction with the Rochester Museum of Contemporary Art. i am pretty sure no one reading this is from there, but if you are, come and say hello. I will also give a lecture about my film and work at the School of Film and Animation, but i am not sure the public can join that as well.
I will also be in New York City for some days, where hopefully good things will happen for my new film.
i am pretty sure i bored the crap out of you with this post, so here's the deal summed in one simple more alluring image i took last week in Hollywood:



p.s: shop was out of business.

a big flying machine brought me back to LA last night. my room looks exactly the same as I left it, what's different is my hard drives, which are choke full of more than 50 hours of footage and countless pictures, created over the last three weeks in Sicily.
can't deny I'm extremely excited to sit down and fold my sleeves and start the slow process of editing and creating all the additional visual content for the film.
I have also created a Twitter account for the film, so if you use it feel free to start following it for updates and to hear me complaining about misbehaving keyframes and interviewees not repeating my question in the answer.
below is a pic from our last day of shooting, which was about creating a 24 hours time lapse. the thing about the stray dogs is not a joke.

back. i'd love to get a coffee with Salvador Dali and tell him how it went, I am sure he would be proud.
I would like to spend a few lines to infinitely thank you the whole crew, which was awesome and patient and professional (well, we need to work a little more on waking up timing guys - yes, me too, I know).
I will go back to Sicily (yes, that's where we're shooting) next week to shoot more interviews and research archive material I need for the film and to test my belly to see how much food it can store before exploding. below are a few pictures from the first shooting and traveling session.

Salvador Dali enters the stage.
He looks at everyone, without speaking. we, as audience, are hundreds. he examines everyone, and after a minute, he choses me. i walk on stage. everyone is looking at me. you can cut expectations in the air with a knife. i start to freak out. Dali starts to make a weird quick dance with his feet. i think he's telling me to emulate him and i try even if i know that i will make a fool of myself. the audience laughs vigorously. it clearly wasn't what was requested of me. Salvador Dali looks at me scornfully, doesn't say a word. he then proceeds to light three lines of fire, and welcomes me and other two people to walk on them. all eyes on me. the two other persons start walking, and i don't. audience is disappointed and boos. Salvador Dali is about to give up on me when i gather courage and walk the fire. cut to the after-show backstage, my grandmother is having a drink with me and tells me she didn't care much about the walking on fire, she thought it was redundant, but she tells me she loved when i talked about art and life.

normally it would be kinda hard for me to try interpret this dream i had last night. but seeing the context of things, it's not that difficult, as tomorrow i will be leaving with a crew of 9 from the north of Italy headed south, to go shoot the first batch of my new documentary film, The Archaeology of the future.
is my subconscious telling me i'm freaking out? well, thank you subconscious, i could have figure that out myself, you can do better you lazy ass.
one thing that doesn't freak me out though is that the crew i'll be traveling with is composed of mostly best friends and my brother Davide is producing. i love when you can keep things in the family, at least for passion projects like this one (well, let's not forget my production company Paydirt Pictures which is financing). we will be gone for two weeks, but unlike with my previous film Megunica, i won't be keeping an online diary. that doesn't mean the shoot will be less of an adventure than Megunica was, trust me.
come back in a few weeks and i'll have a few more infos and hopefully some nicely lit pictures from the shoot.
now let me go buy 13 pairs of underwear at the chinese store for 5 euros, there won't probably be a laundry machine where we're going.

I am back from the Living Walls conference in Atlanta and as expected I had a damn blast. there's very few things i enjoy more than being around other fellow artists and make art and do things. night-trespassing a swimming pool and a cemetery and sleeping on a wooden rooftop floor brought me back to my teenage years, but going to the Quarry was probably my favorite.

apart from screening my film Megunica, i also gave a small "pecha-kucha" style presentation, in which i introduced my new documentary project, The archaeology of the future. the whole thing consists in showing 20 images with a 20 seconds fixed time to talk about each. when 20 secs pass, the person controlling the slideshow will cruelly move on to the next, and you have to keep up with the flow of the presentation. trust me, it's hard.

goodbye, comfort zone. see you in a year or so.
i am embarking on a new documentary project which will take me who knows where, mentally and physically. i still haven't decided when to start sharing informations about it, but will soon set up a website for the project.
wish me luck, it's going to be a long journey.

finally! the documentary narrating the making of the album N.A.S.A. will premiere on August 2 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. it was directed by my friends and collaborators Sam Spiegel and Syd Garon, and i helped doing some animation segments for it (aided by the magic help of Markus Wagner and Ranefritte). make sure you come and support this 4 years long effort!
congrats Sam and Syd, you fucking rule.

i love it when the excuse to leave LA for a while comes in the form of a festival. I will be in Atlanta from 11 to 15 of August, where my film Megunica will be screened at the Living Walls Conference, an event about public art. in their own words: "The idea behind Living Walls is to put the work of a very small subset of the population (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), people who actually interact with space, and people who spend their time in discourse about public space all under the same roof. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space, hoping that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently." Very much my cup of tea.
The film will be screened at the Java Lords venue on the 12th. More infos on the website. Please come and say hello!

yesterday i was at The Family, the best art bookstore in LA where a lot of my favorite artists pass by all the time, where they hosted a presentation of the new epic book by one of those favorite artists of mine, Anders Nilsen . The magnum opus, which has just been released, is called Big Questions, and it's the collection of all the chapter that he released over the years in smaller fanzine forms. i would find them over the years with great pleasure at random comic bookstores, and soon i realized they were part of a bigger plan/story. nothing out of the ordinary, i agree, if only it didn't take him 12 years to complete the story. TWELVE years. i won't even begin to think about how much dedication, passion and commitment you need to keep going at something for all that time. infact, i was complaining all the time that my film Megunica took me two years to make.. pff, beginner.
you can buy Anders book directly from Drawn & Quarterly website here, you won't regret it, trust me.

the short film I shot for the Levi's Workshop Food event, "The sound of heat", is up online. yes, we ate that food after camera stopped rolling.

my friend and main VFX artist Markus Wagner (who is part of the collective LWZ) has just helped me once again for free on the teaser for a new project, and since i can't pay him with jewelry and a fancy house on the Alps, least i can do as usual is to share with you his and his collective's latest work, which is nothing short of fucking amazing. Markus is available for freelance work, so go forth and hire him. but please pay him, don't do like me.

a still from Saturday's shoot with chef Ludo Lefebvre. the heat, people, the heat.

skateboarding and filmmaking are two very smart activities that adults devised in order to be able to secretly keep being children at heart while performing apparently "grown-ups" endeavours.

when you don't even have time to shave your beard, it means you're having a busy period. that's what happens with me anyway. i'm currently working for two short films commissioned by the Moca/Levi's Film workshop, in conjunction with the Art in the Streets exhibition here in Los Angeles. both videos use the work of two artists (filmmaker Spike Jonze and chef Ludo Lefevbre) as a starting point, and both will be very different from each other. and my beard will be even more different as well.

i guess the day had to come sooner or later. it probably came later than sooner, but anyway, here it is:

you can now watch my documentary film Megunica in its entirety, the director's cut, online. starting from today, June 22nd 2011, until July 22nd 2011. there's also an interview with me about the project and other stuff. if you don't know what the documentary is about, feel free to peruse the film website.
and since the valve to inflate my ego is temporarily open, i guess i'll use this moment to point you to a few other interviews i've had in the last few months: this one and this other one. ok, valve closed.

the documentary about NASA, the project created by Sam Spiegel and DJ Zegon is about to come out. it was directed by Sam and Syd Garon. just thought it'd be nice to share one of the transitions i helped creating, together with some fellow animators.

love the work of Zac Gorman. this little four panels story is just perfect.

someone just reminded me of this old comic I did for Fab Magazine, back when I was in Fabrica in 2006. it was accompanying an article about what came first, if egg or chicken.
I wasn't really sure so I told both stories.

i enjoy taking the bus around LA, and sometimes i enjoy even more waiting for it.
i kept staring at this guy for minutes, and finally, too intrigued, I asked what he was up to. he said that under that cover was supposed to be a tree growing and the city put that cover to prevent the tree from becoming big and hide the bus stop sign. i didn't really buy the story, but his determination and commitment to his endeavour was so big that i decided to help him try move the thing, knowing already of course that it was going to be pointless. unfortunately, the bus came and i never had the chance to see if he did manage to accomplish his goal or not.
say what you want, but this guy's perseverance reminded me a lot of things about what it is to be a filmmaker.

the TED conferences are possibly the best thing that happened to human race in the last 100 years, together with the invention of fruit smoothies and urethane. this is my all time most favorite lecture, given by Sir Ken Robinson.

my very good friend and constant collaborator Luca Zamoc has finally put up the english version of his great short graphic novel "The man who talked to himself". It's a fantastic piece of graphic storytelling that deals with self-analysis, women, art and, well, dicks. no, not dicks, just a dick. his.
ok, this is the awkward moment where i step aside and just let you, my most welcome reader, check out the pdf version of the comic below (make sure you go full screen).

i think that the time has come to share a little excerpt from my documentary Megunica, which is a film I directed a couple years ago about a trip taken by me and a team of other filmmakers with artist Blu through Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Argentina. this scene is taken from the Guatemala segment of the trip.

i finally uploaded on Vimeo the video i did last year for icelandic band For a Minor Reflection. the song is called "A Moll". take a look if you haven't done already.

this project called "12:31" by Croix Gagnon and Frank Scott is incredible.

UPDATED: i created the page dedicated to the video in the music videos section, complete with behind the scenes images. check it out!
Visiting NYC, trying to (hopelessly) find some rest in body and mind. Meanwhile, one of the two real heroes of my Metronomy video (animators/directors Max Winston and John Joyce) has put up online a nice montage of time-lapses of them animating the seagulls. Look at them suspenders, they clearly tell who was boss on set.
p.s: come back soon for full credits and more behind the scenes material.

The Metronomy video is out. More on it later.

Did you donate? Make sure you do.
By the way, this week New Yorker's cover (by Christoph Niemann) is beautiful and heartbreaking:

even happier to let you guys know that the Metronomy music video I've been working on in the last few weeks is coming together very nicely. We shot lots of stop motion here in LA and I flew to London for a couple days to shoot the band, whose members are lovely and have good taste in dressing.
here's two pictures of the two stages. different scales, same video. small, big. good and even better.

very happy to let you guys know that I'm currently pre-producing the music video for the new Metronomy single, The Look. we'll shoot in LA and London. It will be fun and difficult and tiring and exciting and merciless just like all the other times.
on an unrelated note, i just found out this artist has started working in front of my house. can't wait to have mine done, but looks like I need to find a good cape first.

a little bit late on this, but.. R.I.P., Poppa Neutrino.

When asked by the Cape Cod Times if he “would change anything about his sometimes dangerous, on-the-move life” Poppa Neutrino answered, “What I would do is explain to every person I had a personal relationship with, whether it was a friendship or romance, that I’m abstract-random and they’re concrete-sequential…The two may meet for a night of romance, but they’ll never travel the road together.”

attacking my sketchbook from all sides

just got back from Sundance. i seriously had a fantastic week, mostly because i was hangin with David Oreilly and his producer Henning (who got an honorable mention for their ridiculously good short The External World), Kirsten Lepore (who won the Slamdance Grand Jury animation award with her ridiculously good short Bottle), Jon Klassen (who was there to hang, just like me), and the sweetest couple on earth, Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata. (yes, you're encouraged to check out their great work). who cares about the films, it's all about sharing the hot tub!
we decided to detour to Vegas on our way back (where everything that happens there stays there, sorry), and on our way there David had this idea to reenact the Winkie's scene from Mulholland Drive. I helped by shooting.

average conversation of the last 6 months when i meet someone i know around town:



There are two alternate endings. This is the one for when I'm in Italy: (notice how final draft warns you that "fucking" is a word you should fix)



and this is the one for when I'm in Los Angeles:

a small drawing i did for a friend. there was no plan on my part to put this on the website but it came out nicely, so why not.

i just realized how this website is embarassingly all just about me and me and some more me, so i thought i would give props to something that wasn't done by, well, me.
this project by Jon Rafman, in my opinion, is the most significant "photographic" project of the last 10 years.

Arrivederci, Mario. E grazie.

I probably can't explain with words how relieved I am to be able to write these words, which sounds like a true paradox.
The two spots I did for the Boys and Girls Clubs campaign are finally up. i definitely deserve a vacation now (not that i'm getting one, but i think deserve it).
a big thank you to Paydirt for helping me out bring these two projects to life.

The Denzel Washington film:



and the general Wesley Clark one:

The Jamie Woon "Night air" music video I directed is out. Shot on location in Chertsey, in the London countryside.

i can't believe i found the time to sit down in a pub and draw something, in the midst of all the music video madness.

airplane pilots can get creative too! i'm in London preparing to shoot my first music video with Warp, for artist Jamie Woon.



this is a picture from today's location scout, it really doesn't have anything to do with the video but let's be realists, it's meerkats chillin under a heater. i mean, you know what i mean.

halloween is quickly approaching, so what better moment to share with you guys the wonderful moments i had at last year's one.

today i was browsing through some of my original art, and found this little thing I did in occasion of an art show put together for last year's Bicycle Film Festival in Milan.
revenge taken, with ink pen and coffee.

this is the result of my September trip to Italy. hope you like. i do.

glad to be back in Italy and working with Mercurio again, this time for a Nike spot. here are a couple snaps from the shoot (note to myself: make that bruise a lifelong statement against my stubborness).

i am happy to say that finally, after years years of sweat, long nights spent in front of thousands of pixels, eventually, in spite of hundreds of obstacles, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, trimming, shaving, in the end, at last, wait.. i forgot what i was going to say.
oh, yes, i got it: i am now represented by Warp Films for commercials and music videos in the UK.
this is how i feel right now:

a couple weeks ago i was riding a train in Alaska. faint of heart, this unedited and unadulterated clip of a bridge crossing is for you.

the music video i did for the icelandic band For a Minor Reflection is finally up. The song is "A Moll" from the album "Höldum í átt að óreiðu". Please watch it below (make sure you watch the HD version). And sorry about the lack of explanations this time, i'd rather let the images do the talking.

before deciding for some obscure reason that what i wanted to focus on in my life was directing, i tried different mediums and ways of working with the arts. one field i was incredibly interested in (well, i still am) were interactive installations. the amazing amount of human ingenuity and creativity that is poured in the creation of this kind of artworks never ceases to amaze me. for instance, watch this video of Listening Post, by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. witnessing that installation was pure ecstatic bliss.
so, since i myself gave this wonderful new art field a shot, here i present you with one of the installations i created when part of the collective Thankyourupert, together with Enrico Mazzi and Rudy Melli.
the white liquid is milk, and the phrases that come out of the toys are those silly made up stories that your parents used to tell you as an excuse to not have you do something they didn't want to cope with. when grown, you look back at those memories and smile about them, being old enough to digest them with the help of some of the milk they forced down your throat when you were gullible enough to believe in everything. aah, youth.
the installation was based on Processing language. a camera was placed on the ceiling shooting at the pool, so to track the different toys floating. when a toy was moved, the program would recognize movement and a new phrase would be crapped by the toy, it would float for a minute and then sink forever into milk oblivion.

Watermelon seed - Interactive installation from lorenzo fonda on Vimeo.

during the course of a director's career, especially in the beginning, he will find himself having to ask favors to friends and people whose work he respect. i mean, I did, and still do (just to be precise, "asking a favor" means asking someone to work for you for free). I have multiple people I keep going back to work with, but one vfx collaborator that stands out and deserves his own little space is Markus Wagner. Hailing from Austria, he basically worked on almost every project I've done since my documentary Megunica (check this little teaser he did for the film). He's like the dream collaborator, basically. Incredibly versatile, always willing to do his best, always bringing something of his own to the project and always willing to tell you gofuckyourself if you're asking too much of him.
The latest projects he worked on for me were the For a Minor Reflection music video (about to come out) and some really fun vfx for the N.A.S.A. film.
So, since the only reason he worked on my projects was for passion, the very least thing I can do is share with you his new live visuals reel and suggest you use him for your next project. He does also vfx of course, which you can go check on his website.

Blade Runner private screening on a friend's rooftop in downtown. looks like everything is going according to plans.

As visual artists, we might rephrase the question as something like: How has the Internet changed the way we see?
For the visual artist, seeing is essential to thought. It organizes information and how we develop thoughts and feelings. It's how we connect.
So how has the Internet changed us visually? The changes are subtle yet profound. They did not start with the computer. The changes began with the camera and other film-based media, and the Internet has had an exponential effect on that change.
The result is a leveling of visual information, whereby it all assumes the same characteristics. One loss is a sense of scale. Another is a loss of differentiation between materials, and the process of making. All visual information "looks" the same, with film/photography being the common denominator.
Art objects contain a dynamism based on scale and physicality that produces a somatic response in the viewer. The powerful visual experience of art locates the viewer very precisely as an integrated self within the artist's vision. With the flattening of visual information and the randomness of size inherent in reproduction, the significance of scale is eroded. Visual information becomes based on image alone. Experience is replaced with facsimile.
As admittedly useful as the Internet is, easy access to images of everything and anything creates a false illusion of knowledge and experience. The world pictured as pictures does not deliver the experience of art seen and experienced physically. It is possible for an art-experienced person to "translate" what is seen online, but the experience is necessarily remote.
As John Berger pointed out, the nature of photography is a memory device that allows us to forget. Perhaps something similar can be said about the Internet. In terms of art, the Internet expands the network of reproduction that replaces the way we "know" something. It replaces experience with facsimile.
Eric Fischl & April Gornik - Visual artists

Taken from the massively interesting World Question Center's "How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?" website

i am back in LA, and last night had my craziest, absurdest, surrealest, untellablest, not-grandchildren-story-material experience here to date.
on an unrelated note, this is a picture of an elder man playing Wii bowling in a senior recreation center.

yesterday i went to visit the town where i used to spend summers during my childhood. this is my uncle having some problems with his Apecar.

yesterday i went to visit the town where i used to spend summers during my childhood. this is my uncle having some problems with his Apecar.

I don't know how you handle it because it is a constant thing. I think what I always try to do is say to myself, "How did I feel about this last one when I was around this point, was I feeling good?" The answer to that is usually, "No, you were feeling terrible. You didn't even know that you wanted to make the movie."
There are always times when you don't know if it's a movie.
Wes Anderson on self-doubt and screenwriting

back in my hometown for a while.. when I got home, my mom had prepared a surprise for me: some of my old stop motion characters reunited, in one stylish wooden box. you'll be able to recognize the Sweaty Boxeur, me, my father, Becruno (beheaded), the Mad Jackall, Mafia Dude, Clockwork Orange Dude, and others. all these guys were brought to life by me and my brother (with questionable results) during my teenager years in silly stop motion experiments.



this is one of my favourite experiments. i think i was 16 when i did this. synopsis: a glimpse into the life of a bored drug dealer.

Mighty8, the music video division of my lovely production company, has a shiny new website, full of beautiful clickable moving images.

as i try to finish all my other projects, i also try to keep this website alive, so you people don't think all i do is to sit home and draw penguins buying groceries. here is a video i shot a couple years ago in Prato, Italy, in which Blu and Ericailcane paint a wall. without asking permission. but i guess it's clear enough from the video.

shooting weird pale walking characters (created by Splunny) walking on a random chosen instrument at Squeakeclean studio for NASA film project! i love my job! wait! i'm not getting paid for this! but who cares! i wish all jobs were like this one! wof! look behind you, there's a three headed monkey!

as i try to finish all my other projects, i also try to keep this website alive, so you people don't think all i do is to sit home and draw penguins buying groceries. here is a video i shot a couple years ago in Prato, Italy, in which Blu and Ericailcane paint a wall. without asking permission. but i guess it's clear enough from the video.