Perfect Strangers
Matthew Francescani
Matthew Francescani is a filmmaker who is interested in alternative narrative films and conceptual experimental work. He has an affinity for a minimal and elliptical visual storytelling. He hopes to convey restraint, rhythm, and a provocative sense of aesthetics above all else.
Perfect Strangers preview
By Perfect Strangers
Perfect Strangers preview
By Perfect Strangers
Perfect Strangers preview
By Perfect Strangers
Perfect Strangers preview
By Perfect Strangers
Artist Statement
A cold night in a wealthy New England suburb: a carjacking and subsequently, a romance.

At its most basic, the impetus for this project came from the desire to tell an unconventional love story. I sought to reinvent a project I worked on a few years ago, in which a man breaking into an apartment is met with a lonely woman who asks him “coffee or tea?” I was inspired by a James Joyce quote which I cannot locate that said something along the lines of: "the idea is to tell a simple story with complex means". In a way, I believe that this has been my goal for a long time and that my personal artistic inspirations have simply pushed me further in this direction over time.

While the film was initially intended to be an adaptation of a (very) short story by Alberto Moravia, it is grounded and made relevant to contemporary audiences by my own experiences growing up in Connecticut which inspire the film's characters. In my Sophomore year of high school, I made friends with a group of wealthier kids who had access to a car earlier than others. As we had nowhere to go, we would wander and drive around aimlessly, never going home satisfied. During this time, I came to understand that the kids who had more money would intentionally cause trouble for themselves repeatedly to give their lives a greater sense of meaning. This notion, or more generally that we act against our own self-interest for pleasure, is a theme I have become infatuated with, and was the subject of my last narrative film as well.

With this project, I hope to give this feeling of youthful ennui not only a poignant and restrained visual representation, but also give it the contradictory balance of violence and sensuality that can be felt in Moravia’s writing. I hope that this approach will accurately convey the inability to satisfy this feeling of perpetual liminality, and how only through genuine romance can one catch a glimpse at an escape from this cycle.
Twice Two Makes Five
Late at night, empty high school corridors reverberate with timid footsteps and snide remarks as five contentious teenagers break in and attempt to throw a party.
Spectral
Spectral reuses the same few spaces, but the viewer is unable to connect them logically and instead does so using light, shadow, and texture. Call of Duty 4's "mp_creek" becomes a Deleuzian "any-space-whatever".
Witch
A companion piece to Spectral that focuses on textures.