The Exhibition Explores the Process of Filmmaking With Over a Thousand Artifacts
Fondazione Prada is set to host the exhibition “A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema” from January 30 to September 8, 2025, at the Osservatorio in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The Osservatorio serves as Fondazione Prada’s venue for visual experimentation, focusing on the convergence of technologies and cultural expressions.
Curated by Melissa Harris, the exhibition delves into the intricate process of filmmaking through the display of storyboards and related materials like mood boards, drawings, sketches, scrapbooks, notebooks, annotated scripts, and photography. It features over a thousand artifacts created by more than 50 contributors, including film directors, cinematographers, visual artists, and other film production professionals, spanning works from 1930 to 2024.
Melissa Harris explains the significance of storyboards in filmmaking: “For many, storyboarding is an integral part of the process: visually setting a scene and then plotting out its ebbs and flows may help the film team consider relationships between characters, figure out how to advance the narrative, or realize how to convey the essence of a particular segment. It may also help to troubleshoot, say when something does not seem quite convincing in a character or a physical interaction, or even provide visual references for the actors. More technically, storyboards can help the filmmaker to determine the most effective angles for lighting and shooting or the best use of dissolves and other potential special effects.”
The exhibition’s design, conceived by Andrea Faraguna of the Berlin-based architecture office Sub, is inspired by the storyboard as a fundamental element of cinematic creation. The display includes tables modeled after classic drafting desks, each dedicated to a specific film, allowing visitors to view sequential scenes. These tables are complemented by inverted counterparts suspended from the ceiling, enhancing the spatial experience and creating an optical funnel that guides visitors along a 40 cm wide horizon line through the exhibition.
Additionally, the exhibition is set to travel to Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai from November 2025 to January 2026. The Milan exhibition will also feature an illustrated publication in the Quaderni series, published by Fondazione Prada, including a text by Melissa Harris and a visual essay by Sub.
