French filmmaker Vincent Moon has nearly 700 films under his belt. Despite subjects as diverse as music videos for popular bands like REM or a vérité documentary about a “maestra” of natural medicine in Peru, a certain style shines through. His work is patient but still dynamic. He’s very active behind the camera, yet he makes films of raw intimacy. Asked what he tells his subjects before he starts rolling his digital camera, he says, “Nothing. I really trust in the energy of the moment. That’s where it happens, and before is not the right time. I’m not a director in the sense that I tell people to do this or that. That’s something I really don’t like. I just love to leave people as free as possible.”
He has no concern with “breaking the fourth wall” or calling attention to the fact the camera is present. “I would not even say to them, ‘Do not look at the camera.’ I just think that all these interactions between the camera and the musicians and the moment it goes without words in a sense. There are some energies in the air, and you are asked to find the same ones as the people you are recording, and that’s really, really exciting. I love that. I love this momentum of shooting because I come from this huge love of improvised music.”
His camera often moves around to create relationships between images rather than rely on edits. And a dark palette seems to permeate his work, whether he’s working in black and white or color. He does not come from any traditional school of filmmaking. Responding to a query about his influences, he states: “I came late to films, and my influences are just so diverse … I opened a DVD store 10 years ago to do that, watch all the films possible. But a few names, very diverse and important to me are Chris Marker, Peter Watkins, Guy Debord, Robert Gardner, Peter Mettler, Philippe Grandrieux, Antoine d’Agate, Vittorio de Seta and Peter Tscherkassky.”
He never thought of becoming a filmmaker, or that he would make a career of it. Instead, he had thoughts about the possibility of a filmmaker who existed without a base, who just adopted technologies and locations to keep working. He never thought he would become that filmmaker. “I’m just a complete outsider, and that’s good,” he says with a laugh. “I like that. I just wanted to try things my way, and so I’ve been travelling all those years.”
Though he has been credited for revitalizing the music video (check out this New York Times article), Moon does not want to be known as a music video director. He relates more with the genre of ethnographic film. “We are living in a very interesting moment, this kind of like big truth of the anthropological studies and so on,” he says. “I think we are regaining like a certain in-between, a sort of like interesting balance from an ethnographic type of cinema and a much more poetic, experimental approach, and there’s a few filmmakers exploring those things right now, and that’s really, really exciting.”
The extremely opinionated Moon is curious to explore these ethnographic films, which also include Manakamana and the Oscar-nominated and IndieEthos-championed The Act of Killing. However, though Leviathan has been celebrated on IndieEthos and Film Comment, to Moon, Leviathan is a poor example of execution. “I really, really don’t like this film at all,” he reveals. “It’s very poor actually, in terms of experimental research and everything. I don’t like the images. I hate the sounds. I think the mix is terrible … I mean the idea is interesting, but that’s all. I’m very surprised, actually, it’s had a lot of success for what it is. A lot of people have been talking about it. I’m just wondering if that’s really because of its complete lack of such cinema, that such a film, which is completely outrageous, in my opinion, in terms of its research, in terms of experimenting with tools. There is so much more. But that it has such success, maybe it shows there is definitely not much there that is interesting to see.”
Moving one to his talents, he has had many years and examples to fine tune his skills. Making these films is like an addiction for Moon, and there’s no sign of him slowing down. “It’s a sickness,” he admits. “I did 60 films last year, which are not even only short films. There are a few feature-length films, and that’s just ridiculous, completely ridiculous. I’m trying to do this all, and I have to work all the time on those edits and prepare my next project in Brazil, but it’s too much. That’s why I always want to slow down. I think that technology in a sense, obviously, offers you that easiness of work … It’s very easy to film, to record the sound, to edit, to make the phone calls before, to send the emails after. So you do everything yourself, and it can look really great. You don’t need a team or anything working with you these days, and that’s an incredible thing.”
He has made all his films free to view on his Vimeo page and calls it empowering to anyone else who might aspire to become a filmmaker outside the mainstream of the cinema scene. “It’s very, very powerful,” he declares. “We just have to question this, what it means really because I do not think that the film industry is very much excited about such news.” He pauses to laugh. “They are definitely reluctant about such terms, obviously,” he adds about the commercial film industry.
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This is Part 2 of a 2-part interview. Read the first story here:
Filmmaker Vincent Moon talks about the influence of music and rootlessness in his craft, Part 1
Plus, a different article with a focus on his visit to Miami can be found at the Miami New Times art and culture blog Cultist, jump to that article through this headline:
Indie Filmmaker Vincent Moon To Host Retrospective, Seek “Richness of Miami”
The Vincent Moon retrospective and conversation takes place Thursday, July 24, 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. at The Screening Room, 2626 NW Second Ave., Miami. Free. Indie Film Club Miami has set up an intimate 2-day workshop with Moon on July 26 and 27. Visit www.film-gate.org for more information.
Stinkin cool, we’re diggin it!