Tony Farfalla — The Space Between Us
Far from theatrical spectacle, Farfalla turns a shared cigarette into the choreographic engine of a 16mm duet that extends his spare, haunting visual language.
Play on YouTubeTony Farfalla reconceived a short narrative as The Space Between Us, a 16mm dance film that folds memory and desire into one restrained chamber piece. The work fits neatly into Farfalla’s wider visual world: pared-down spaces, an appetite for film grain and small, charged gestures that register as emotional architecture rather than plot.
Shot in the former POUSH art space and scored with Balmorhea’s Oscuros, the film treats the cigarette not as prop but as third character — a fragile clock that sets pace and proximity. The camera, led by DOP Tom Black, alternates wide, austere frames with handheld closeness so the choreography reads as interior life; hair and makeup by Bastien Zorzetto and the dancers’ raw presence (Marien Mazzoni, Ilona Cabrera) keep the piece tactile rather than emblematic. Farfalla’s hand is visible in the film’s designer choices: the cold, timeless palette and 16mm texture are choices he returns to elsewhere in his work.
"This is something I love about film: that we are using other humans as a medium of expression." — Tony Farfalla (director speaking, not the artist)
The line is literal here: movement, breath and the brief life of a cigarette become the director’s recurring tools for making intimacy feel both fragile and inevitable.
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