​The Rise of Dino Desica is a short film composed of candid footage recorded over four years using a mobile phone camera, at a time when such devices were far less developed than today.

The camera is often casually placed or discreetly hidden, allowing moments to unfold without staging or interruption.

​Blending documentary and performative observation, the film draws on traditions of Italian neorealism, using everyday life as a stage in which work, waiting, and self-presentation become acts of performance.

 

Through casting calls, uninspiring jobs, and repeated encounters with the Jobcentre, Dino Desica navigates a shifting landscape of temporary roles and economic uncertainty while pursuing a creative life.

​The film offers a portrait of the tension between survival and artistic ambition, exposing the precarious and often invisible labour that underpins creative practice, rather than presenting precarity solely as an obstacle.

 

The Rise of Dino Desica questions how instability, constant adaptation, and economic pressure become embodied within artistic work itself, shaping not only how artists live but also how they make, perform, and continuously renegotiate their practice.

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​Shot on a mobile phone by Norman Mine
Edited by Norman Mine
Performer: Dino Desica