edward zorab: just roll the dice
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to make movies. I used to obsessively watch this film called ‘Garden State’ over and over again. I was nine years old first time I saw it, which is far too young for it to resonate, but I was hooked on this idea that there was something I ‘wasn’t getting’. Some hidden treasure the film had yet to offer up to me. I can chart my adolescence against a gradually increasing appreciation and understanding of the film; the idea that there was no grandiose third act that tied everything together, and much like real life, we’re forced to be okay with the fact that not everything wraps itself up in neat little bows - but that’s not to say there’s no beauty or satisfaction to be found in life - instead, that those things happen whilst we’re searching for them. Over the years, I started mimicking the writing styles of some of my favourite filmmakers and authors in a bid to find my own voice.
Changing medium and form from time to time helps you figure yourself out as well. Working on fashion, art and music video content is a hugely explorative task - what aspects of your fiction/narrative work do you carry in-between different mediums - how does your style cling on to you when faced with strict briefs and challenging production logistics. You never really ‘answer’ those questions, you just roll the dice and see what comes out at the end.
I believe my latest film, 'Youth In Bed’ to be the truest articulation of what it is I want to say through my movies. It follows three interconnecting stories of love, youth and pain, spanning from 1979 to 2002, that all remarkably take place in the same bed. As the search for meaning is shared across generations, we see the same patterns occur time and time again in our seemingly chaotic universe. It is a manifesto of the type of stories I want to continue to tell. From the aesthetics to the ideology, the film breaks the conventional structure of short films in a riveting and entertaining way, whilst offering plenty of sub-surface themes to sink your teeth into. You can watch it via it’s website www.youthinbedfilm.com along with a ‘making of’ documentary and a free download of the film’s soundtrack. For work enquiries, visit my website www.edwardzorab.com
