Friends

Synopsis

Between the ages of 11 to 30 I had one "best friend". We did everything together. Together we were undefeated and the world was a warm and safe place. Since we fell out the world has turned dark and scary.

My name is Regev Contes, and I`m a 34 year old freelance director and writer. I spend most of my time alone. One morning I woke up with a strange disease that caused a temporary paralysis in half of my face. I wanted to cry on someone`s shoulder but I was friendless. One day I was so bored and lonely, I even opened a Facebook account.

3 months later I had 1107 friends on Facebook. No, wait, 1108. We were sharing everything and I felt highly connected to all of them, spending more and more hours "with" them. My paralysis was almost completely gone. I was feeling great.

I met a girl and fell madly in love with her. At first, I abandoned my newfound friends. I thought I had gotten over Facebook, managed to create a relationship in "real" life, but then we broke up. I was devastated. My Facebook friends try to comfort me, but this time it was nowhere near enough. I needed real people in my life. I had 2940 friends. I still felt alone.

For my up and coming 35th birthday I have decided, for the first time in my life, to throw a party.

This party will be a 3 day picnic to which I'll invite my (thousands of) Facebook friends. The aim is to find my new best friend. To examine whether the relationships which were created in the cyber world have any meaning in the real life. If face to face, spontaneous dialogue can compete with well thought-out, edited status postings.

The picnic is the first stage in this comic documentary experiment. I hope to make a list of maximum 15 potential friends. Then I'll “date” all of them, and we'll do all kind of things together, things that friends used to do before there was Facebook.

I will probably make the same mistakes that brought me to this point, where at the age of 35 I have no friends from high school,  art school or work. Only this time I'll be surrounded by socially dysfunctional people who thrive only on the computer. Just like me. Can we change?