About
Artist statement
Regardless of the medium I’m currently working with, I consider myself an essayist. Through my films and media art, I try to uncover the complexities of what we perceive as banal and unimportant; to give a second look to something that is taken for granted or even designed to go unnoticed.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been exploring the intersection of film and data. My aim is to make cinematic experiences using cutting-edge tools, artificial intelligence, and open data while bringing the politics of technology to the forefront.
The environment that appears in many of my works is that of a city’s periphery – that’s where I grew up and where I feel at home. It both haunts and inspires me; I can’t help but love the wild landscape permeated by highways and box-like architecture. Periphery, modernist housing estates, the suburbs – they all share an air of otherworldliness, and escape from these spaces seems impossible. Their beauty can seem frustrating and even perverse. The same can be said about my works.
I’m interested in how (peripheral) surroundings and media shape who we are. In a single breath, I can go from subtle lyricism to politics and back again.
Curriculum Vitae
October 2019 – present
Freelancer, Rome, Italy
Filmmaker & Multimedia Artist
October 2017 – September 2019
Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, Czechia
Film & TV Faculty, Center for AV Studies
Master's Degree
September 2018 – October 2018
Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre, Toronto, Canada
Internship at the Tech Department
October 2016 – September 2017
Schwules Museum*, Berlin, Germany
Internship at the PR Department
September 2014 – September 2017
Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, Czechia
Film & TV Faculty, Center for AV Studies
Bachelor's Degree
April 2013 – September 2013
Cultural Center Kontakt, Bratislava, Slovakia
Event Manager
September 2012 – August 2013
Academy of Performing Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia
Film Faculty, Department of AV Studies
September 2008 – August 2012
Gymnazium Velka okruzna, Zilina, Slovakia
February 1993
born in Zilina, Slovakia
References
We decided to give a special mention to Abstract Horror by Franz Milec for its outstanding imagery, otherworldly music, and sound design. Based on an interview with one of the most controversial thinkers of our times, this science-fiction journey collapses motion graphics - 3D imagery, in an innovative and uncanny way.
– Andrea Lissoni (Chief Curator of the Film Collections, Tate Modern) & Carlos Casas (Filmmaker & Artist) in a Ji.hlava IDFF jury statement
With the animation titled Head First, Franz Milec goes straight into the depth of the field of a TV screen in a careful, minimalist fashion. The video is a perfectionist, foggy, gloomy, yet suggestive loop, built as a slow passage through the scenery of a post-apocalyptic urban space, observed by the 'camera-eye‘, unrestrained by real-world technical possibilities.
– Matej Nytra (Film Publicist) in his 2018 review of works from CAS FAMU
Bio
Czech/Slovak experimental filmmaker, media artist & film researcher currently based in Rome, Italy. In my artistic practice, I tell stories with data.
I graduated from CAS FAMU in September 2019, and over the past few years, my works have been screened at festivals and shown at exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and many other countries.
I’m a regular at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (part of the Doc Alliance), and my works belong to the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre catalog and also the Viennese Aa Collections.