Balene Film is a studio for image production and research, based in Rome and Ficarra. It operates through two branches: Artica, dedicated to cinema and video production, and Pongo Studio, dedicated to developing software and tools for filmmakers.
The name
Whales communicate, organize their social lives, and transmit their identity through song: socially learned systems that evolve over time and propagate as culture. It is a founding image: art not as an ornament added to communal life, but as part of its fabric — form and function that cannot be separated, because each is the vector of the other.
Genesis
I founded Balene Film in 2022, after almost twenty years making images for cinema. I wanted a place that wasn’t only a production house, but a space where cinematographic practice and technical research could coexist. In 2023 the studio took its current shape, splitting into two complementary branches: Artica, which continues the work of cinema and video production, and Pongo Studio, dedicated to software. In 2024 the development of digital tools became the heart of Pongo: this is where the applications for filmmakers now on their way are built. My ideas about visual language — the image in the service of feeling — lead me daily to seek photographic solutions in the work I make. That need I have always paired with the will to imagine and build tools and workflows that ease the daily work on set.
The two branches
-
Artica - Cinema and video production. Documentaries, auteur work, and commissioned projects.
-
Pongo Studio - Software and tool development for filmmakers.
When shooting a film, fiction or documentary, what matters most is catching that moment in the way the story needs. Sometimes those moments aren’t planned, but spontaneous. Pongo Studio is building tools designed to give filmmakers extreme control over the final result while keeping maximum freedom on set, so the focus stays on the language of the film, with the tool never getting in the way.