The Empty Building

Fabulous film-making, it was quite engaging. A real treat to watch and wonder. Felt more like I was exploring much like the characters. At first, I felt a little uneasy with the subject matters then realizing this is real stuff, it's life and the characters struggling for better understanding is a great dimension of mankind...hope. The Director, Giovanni handled things with great sensitivity and honor for the events depicted and never playing with emotional strings. He also exhibited great imagination to set up the story and where it all takes place. Bizare, Bizare! (Outstanding actor I should also mention. People will come to know his talents.)

Make more stories about people confronting the building. It will probably help a lot of people too. I think you'd like that. Thank you,

Patsy B.

For the past few years, there has been a monthly screening of short films from New York State "Emerging Filmmakers." I saw The Empty Building at the October 31, 2005 screening and it was not only one of my favorites from the series, but one of my favorite short films of all time.

It speaks of the horrors of our modern lives. It speaks of the things in each of our pasts that hold us back -- the subtle and the dramatic traumas that choke off the capacity to live our lives, demanding our attention to try and solve the unsolvable puzzle of how to unchain our present selves from the past. The answer is to change ourselves to accept what happened, but that's not such an easy path.

Thus, there is an empty building where we relive our fantasies and hash out that acceptance. Where we can go to embrace ourselves and our past selves and our successes and our failures. It's where those demons live and where we can look them straight in the eye and say goodbye.

Caught the film at the Gotham Short Film Festival a couple of weeks ago. I was blown away by the story and art filled scenes-- one beauty after another. Strong contents involving the mind set of people having todeal with their early years where problems occurred, big big problems. All within this weird building where anything goes. Excellent Production values from top to bottom. This film is strange and gets stranger by the minute but there's something there that keeps you watching.

Great acting from the director Govanni Sanseviero. This man has talent in many fields. This film works!

A really good piece of film work here. Much like the other comments, I found it very entertaining to sit through. By far one of the better films I got my hands on involving independent filmmakers and their abilities to tell a story. Clearly the most inventive. I'm glad to see there was more effort in creating then just throwing a story together. Tons and tons of detail and a command for taking you aboard for a stirring ride. This could not have been an easy film to do.

This is the Director's first film, nice nice way to start a career. There should be more coming, I'm sure of this. He says things that make you think instead of just showing with a predictable formula. Wake up you other wanna-bee Directors. Start with this film and get it right.

The Empty building is a really terrific motion picture. Not only is the imagery extremely captivating, the story in a weird way catches you by surprise. You do know you're in for something big after watching the brief story up front and only after watching the entire movie did I fully understand these were individual stories presented under one title. In hindsight, this was rather crafty to do. I won't get into the details, I'd hate to give anything more away and it sure is tough to explain within these narrow margins but the connection between a person and this empty building sets up nicely.

The second story begins seemingly uneventful and takes its time being introduced, although the setup is so out there, you just watch because it's really nutty in a profound way. I found great curiosity wondering where it was all going. And then like a hidden crevice you fall right in with the reality of what this story is all about. I must say, there have been other stories about this topic, but not like this.

I think any story within the empty building would be as inventive as what I watched here and in the end there is explicitly a hint of more topics to come. I hope this makes sense when I say; the biggest story about the empty building is the empty building itself and the topics within are wonderful furnishings. This film is a winner, a true testament to storytelling.