A New Exhibition Reveals the Thought Processes of Cinema’s Greats

Rarely do we get a glimpse into the earliest stages of an artist’s creative journey, but A Kind of Language, a new exhibition at Fondazione Prada, offers a remarkable opportunity to peer behind the scenes at the inception of some of the most iconic films of the past 100 years.

Not only does the exhibition offer a glimpse into film history, it also gives a raw and unfiltered look at the inner workings of some of cinema’s most creative brains. It’s not the polished and edited films on show, which the artists and directors approved for mass consumption; rather, visitors see the early workings of a project, which are similar to how many of us might work – notes scribbled in the column of a page of an unfettered brain dump. A Kind of Language humanises the greats while also showing the thought processes that made them so. 

The exhibition illuminates the collaborative nature of filmmaking through over 800 artifacts from more than 50 artists, including mood boards, drawings, sketches, scrapbooks, and photographs. Classics such as Superman, Popeye the Sailor, Psycho and Rebecca are explored alongside The Virgin Suicides, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Boy and The Heron and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unproduced Dune. Together, the artifacts offer a deeper appreciation for the immense effort it takes to bring films to life, as well as recognition for an often overlooked role.

American curator Melissa Harris says the title of the exhibition was inspired by musician and writer David Byrne, who told her that sometimes, in order to communicate a visual idea, the language needs to be visual. “Storyboards may be considered a language on its own, complementing and elaborating on a concept or script,” Harris explains. “They represent one of the first visualizations of a director’s idea and vision before the film is actually shot.”

On the eve of the exhibition’s public opening, Harris reflected on the two-year research project that led to this moment.

What drew you to this project? 

MH I was writing a book and at some point I just needed a break. Someone had told me that Martin Scorsese drew for his films, which sounded really interesting. I knew the concept [of storyboarding], but I had never really thought about it. I Googled and I saw these incredible drawings for Raging Bull and also for Taxi. I thought, ‘This is so interesting, I’ve never seen this,’ and I’m someone who is very interested in the process of collaboration – I was an editor of a magazine for a long time, so I loved the collaboration aspect of that. 

I looked into various archives and spoke to some people and then I proposed it to Fondazione. It’s kind of a dream to do a project, first of all, that hasn’t been done before, and also really a cool challenge to figure out how you render a process. Can you do it? You’re showing everything but the art, in a sense. 

Do you think exploring these materials alters how we view the finished films?

MH It becomes more intimate. I don’t know that it changes my idea of the film, because I realize that the storyboards are a way of getting somewhere. For example when you see the Lisbon sisters in the Sofia Coppola storyboards or Fellini’s caricatures, it helps you to understand how much work goes into making a film and how many moving parts there are. I feel lucky, it becomes a different kind of intimacy. Especially with a film I’ve seen numerous times. 

It’s a look behind the curtain… 

MH Exactly! It’s like with the Wim Wenders [Wings of Desire] sequence, to know that he came back to Berlin after not being there for so many years and he sees angels everywhere and he starts photographing them and then it evolves into this splendid film. But to know that he’s just kind of wandering around, and he sees this as this icon that keeps coming up – that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. Maybe film scholars might know these stories, but for me the storyboards are revelatory, they give you something else. 

What were the most surprising shifts you noticed in how storyboards have evolved between 1920 and 2024?

MH Some people now are using the computer a little bit more to draw, and of course there’s animated storyboards. For Yolo because the director [Jia Ling] is also the star, she records herself so she can watch it and then that becomes a storyboard. So as technology has evolved, some people’s process has changed, but some are still drawing. It has expanded the possibilities. 

Did you notice any cultural differences in storyboarding? 

MH No, that might be my own deficit but I think it’s so much about the individual sensibility of the filmmaker. It’s a really diverse body of material we have here, and I don’t think it’s about gender or ethnicity or nationality, it feels like it’s about the sensibility of the artist. 

What guided your selection of the featured artists? 

MH It wasn’t particularly esoteric. I would love to tell you we had this grand strategy, but first we cast the net very wide and we started getting material in, then had to narrow that down. But we just wanted a diversity in the material, diversity in the backgrounds and gender which was more complicated because it’s a very male field. For example we reached out to the people who work with Lina Wertmuller but storyboarding wasn’t something she did. But that happens. I reached out to John Waters and he was like, ‘Damn, I’ve never really used those.’ 

I appreciated the inclusion of more mainstream films, such as Finding Nemo. It makes the exhibition more accessible to a wider audience.

MH With Nemo, it turned out one of the directors, Andrew Stanton, is my neighbour in New York. So one day I just knocked on his door. It made it so easy, because then he directed me to exactly the person at Pixar who could make it happen, and she was fantastic. So it’s just getting to the right person who’s not going to give you an immediate “no.” 

Has this process opened up your mind to other mediums you would like to exhibit? 

MH Sure (laughs). But that was the thing about this. One could have decided to include drawings for theatre, or drawings for dance. At some point, knowing the space and given how much disparate work we had, we thought, let’s just try to stay within the medium. Yes, we have someone like Matthew Barney or Ericka Beckman, who come more out of the “art world” so we opened it up to that a little bit more. Also because we wanted to get more women in. But this was also a very different kind of work, so I’m thrilled that we did that.

The addition of certain final videos into the exhibition was interesting, what made you decide to show these selected pieces?

We tried to do it when it made sense. Because there is work that isn’t readily available, you can’t just go see Joan Jones’ or Ericka Beckman’s work very easily, so why not at least show it? 

A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema is on show at the Osservatorio, located at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan until 8 September.