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The Project 
 

Heist Films Entertainment, consists in the invention of a film production company with the aim of discussing boundaries between reality and fiction, mechanisms of image production, cultural industry, instant celebrity and intellectual property.

 

The explosion of new media changed the relationship we have with information. We live in a time where anyone can put information on the internet and multiply versions of the same subject. The veracity of the facts remains suspended. We receive internet rumors (hoaxes) on a daily basis through spam and social networking. That transforms people's lives. The excesses that new media offers contribute to a general improvisation. The image's technical reproducibility undoes its authenticity, its unique and original character.

 

Therefore, this project aims to create and distribute fake trailers, they never become feature films. Shown on the internet and in cinemas, accompanied by all the apparatuses of dissemination used by the film industry they become a viral piece. For the construction of "movies that do not exist", it was essential to use cliches as artifices for representation. In virtually all synopses of commercial films (mainly U.S.) expressions like "looking for love", "contagious", "exciting" or "amazing ", such elements have been appropriated in the construction of these pieces of divulgation.

 

These "virals" raise questions about the phenomenon of instant celebrity, currently on vogue. A person can become a celebrity for any reason, whether  because he/she is on a video on the internet or even because he/she wears a blue wig, as in "TokyoShow " (In search of love, 2011)- one of the trailers of the project.

 

Improvisation is an important development to the project of Heist Films. In the direction of these films only one action is required, like simply opening a door or taking a sip of water; the lines are subsequent creations. The mix of professional actors with amateurs makes this tool a working method. On the set of Heist Films Entertainment production company, the director also acts, establishing an equalitarian relationship between character-character - destroying the conventional hierarchy between director-actor.ARGUMENTWhat separates fact from fiction is the experience related to the act of living. Thus, both historical past and possible future are fictional narratives emulating the experience of another. There is no return to the real because the very concept of reality is flawed: to internalize the world we created, mentally, a representation of this material universe around us. It is here the simulation of time. This may have been one among the greatest literary discussions throughout the twentieth century. The concept of fiction itself was very different until the nineteenth century from what we conceive today.

 

Yet various authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Gabriel García Márquez, just to stay with some Latin American examples, have addressed this problem: what shapes the real? More, these authors seem to still question: how to know if the "real" is not a distortion of yourself? Based on the concept of simulation- developed by Jean Baudrillard in his text Simulacra and Simulation- Gustavo Von Ha created the project Heist Films Entertainment. Working the narrative tics originated and propagated by Hollywood's production, Gustavo produced films whose plots are delivered through its trailers. These feature films will never exist, but the trailers can be daily accessed on the Internet.

 

We are accustomed to narrative cinema's formulas and therefore we are able to infer plots and twists from Heist Films' trailers. But all of this has been imagined by each of us never to be proven real or fake. These are signs that construct meaning by indexes that we are able to identify.

 

There is, even in this situation, a nuance about the narratives that Von Ha leads to inhabit the world: the trailers do not deliver any information about the plot. Presentations of characters are more or less familiar situations from movie screens. Here the force of imagination and induction takes place and acts. Is this the power of cinema? To make real what is imaginary? If we can have a partial response, to this simple question, confirming it, we can also have one other answer denying it.The video and the film production within it, has its own language that implies a direct relationship between sequence plans, sections, lines, soundtrack, lighting, etc. Maybe that's why even the Heist Project has been addressing this language. When working with trailers, the project added a layer of discussion to the video: the free distribution of pictures on the internet. Network users are entitled to use the images of these preludes in ways that best suit them. Making these pieces of communication (trailers) in viral narratives, possibly distorted over time, which inhabit and are inhabited by us all. Again we find ourselves with the question: How does one define real?

 

If we scrutinize Heist Films' movies, we will arrive at the question: what is the real purpose of these trailers? Which again will lead us to other questions: These movies do not narrate a story, however present us with characters. For what? Some of them start with (catch) phrases as "a true story in Hollywood." Apparently these stories were invented (all of them?) or we still uphold the pretense that everything we tell about our lives are strictly data and facts that occurred? We forget that wereenact our lives at every moment of remembrance?

 

Human life is full of representations. Artistic production is guided throughout it. For Plato, to represent, to reenact, was equivalent to lying. So maybe in his ideal republic there was no place for poets and artists. Over the past of nearly three millennia we have choosen to be inhabited, and the inhabitants of poetry. We are more than animals because we are able to communicate and to abstract, yet we will not be better than them. The humble complexity allows man to choose how he approaches and stands before the world. This is the argument set for this project: in a world populated by hoaxes, distortions and simulations. How do we seed realities ? What possible futures we want to bequeath to future generations? Narratives which are capable of producing or emulate?

 

By integrating virtual logic, in which the images on the internet are loose and belong to all, we oppose the movies and plays publicizing Heist Films' Project to the understanding of the artistic material production (the work) as physical and intellectual property of their respected owners/buyers.

 

“DreamWaves” is the only real feature-length movie of this project, it was made from the fake trailers images (TokyoShow, Gasoline, No Diving) and many interviews, the actors represent themselves in a fiction. They are affected by a massive propaganda system, which uses a set of radio antennas that propagate waves able to invade and infect the dreams, the viewer comes into contact with stories, in a tone of déjà vu, that call into question the reality or what we believed to be the reality: “where are we now?”

 

 

Background

 

In today's world everything can be commodified, in this virtual era it becomes increasingly difficult to protect copyright. Mimicry and the loss of control over the appropriation of an image are directly connected to our time. Heist Films Entertainment Project's decision to open the usage rights of the films on the internet, reiterates this argument. Previous work of Gustavo investigate the production of the image along the History of Art, the Heist Project is a continuation of this research, while updating it. Bringing the field of discussions surrounding authorship, circulation of images and information in the virtual era, the society of the spectacle and the disappearance of boundaries between different artistic media production - such as the visual arts and cinema.

 

Cultural institutions focused on multidisciplinary arts - capable of hosting film festivals, presenting plays, propose and carry out historical and contemporary exhibitions - are forming the artistic circuit, becoming responsible for expanding access to historic and contemporary artistic production in the city ​​and country's panorama.

 

 

 

Gustavo von Ha