
09.05.2012 / Arts & Culture
Web cinema
Film distribution can be a tough and overcrowded business – particularly in Italy. It is probably for this very reason that Flavio Parenti, an Italian actor and director who’s been recently working with great names such as Woody Allen, Pupi Avati and Sergio Rubini, decided to try a different strategy: publishing his work on the Internet.
In order to do that, though, Flavio had to adapt the content to the medium, turning what was supposed to be a movie for the big screen into a web series.
That’s how By My Side was born. Written with co-author Pier Luigi Pasino, the series tells the story of a band whose frontman has mysteriously disappeared.Although it shares some of the main features of a web series – short episodes, a limited number of locations and a small group of characters – By My Side has a wider plot which, while still being enjoyable within the space of every single episode, reminds more of a TV series like Breaking Bad (of which Flavio admits being a fan) than of a regular web series.
By refusing the usual resort to popular references, (supposedly) amateurish shots and close editing, Flavio takes another step further from other apparently similar products, and chooses instead a very slow and dream-like rhythm where the characters wander around like actors lost on a dim lit stage. Definitely worth a watch.
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