“LE SAVOIR-FAIRE” by The Stimuleye, a film for Jean-Paul Lespagnard’s #1/2015 collection,
with music by TEPR.

WhatTheFIAC, written & directed by Antoine Asseraf.

FIAC, Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain, 2013 trailer, directed by Antoine Asseraf.

For its 40th edition, and in order to accommodate the ever-growing interest in the art scene, the FIAC is expanding and taking different forms throughout Paris.

Beyond the glass dome of the Grand Palais and the hundreds of galleries showing there, the FIAC is installing artwork accessible for free to the public in its “Hors-les-murs” (‘outside the walls’) program. Prestigious locations such as the Jardin des Tuileries, Place Vendôme, and Jardin des Plantes are joined this year by the brand new Berges de Seine left bank pedestrian embankments, running from Musée d’Orsay to Quai Branly.

YUM.

FIAC 2013. Photo by René Habermacher.

FIAC 2013
October 24-27
Grand Palais
& Hors-les-Murs: Petit Palais / Berges de Seine / Jardin des Tuileries / Auditorium du Louvre / Place Vendôme / Jardin des Tuileries

WhatTheFIAC
produced by SayWho
creative direction The Stimuleye
directed by Antoine Asseraf
photography by René Habermacher
art direction by Mathilde Nivet
hands by Aurélie Nguyen
voice by Lynsey Peisinger

Interview by Filep Motwary & Antoine Asseraf.

Elisha Smith-Leverock. 

Your new video for Esser is very strong, and seems to show more confidence, perhaps because of the success of “I Want Muscle” ? I would like to hear your thoughts on “I Want Muscle”, how the story was perceived and how difficult or easy it was working for the film.

I think the Esser video and I Want Muscle might seem more confident because they are both very personal projects.

Making ‘I Want Muscle’ was a great experience. I set out to explore what physical strength can mean for women and I also wanted to challenge and expand peoples ideas of female beauty.

Obviously there were some difficulties, especially trying to find clothes for Kizzy to wear. Some designers just flat out did not want their clothes to be seen on a bodybuilder and others were willing to lend but sample sizes are generally tailored to fit a very specific kind of figure, so they did not fit her.
The reactions to the finished film were overwhelmingly positive, from winning the ASVOFF Grand Prix, down to the number of people that watched to film and how they reacted to it.

A lot of people have said to me that they had never seen a female body builder portrayed in this way, without the fake tan and irony. But there was a time when people were more appreciating of ‘strong’ women and different body types, just think of Lisa Lyon for example.

I WANT MUSCLE by Elisha Smith-Leverock.

You made, if I’m not mistaken, the first music video for Esser, as well as the one for his hit “Headlock” – how is it working with someone you know intimately, to be simultaneously in tune with his world and able to step back to connect it to a bigger picture?

It’s the best and the worst thing at the same time. It’s amazing because you have great mutual trust and it’s really easy to communicate and yet it’s the scariest thing because you feel so much more pressure. You don’t want to let the other person down when they have done something so great and have worked so hard for it. You don’t want to let them down by not getting your end right.

When I shot Ben’s first video and successively the video for Headlock the approach was somewhat naive. These were also amongst my first experiments with moving image and it was really fun because Ben was just finding his feet as a solo artist so we both didn’t feel any pressure going into it.
The process for his new video was more conceptual which very much mirrors Ben’s approach to making the track.

What are your inspirational catalysts and how they help you form what you do today?

Most recently I’ve ben watching a lot of Hans Richter films, this has been a great influence for the ‘Enmity’ video.

Esser: Enmity on Nowness.com by Elisha Smith-Leverock.

How do you approach making music videos versus fashion films ?

I think generally making fashion films gives me a little bit more freedom so my approach varies. It will alway depend on if it’s a personal project where fashion aspect is a byproduct to the story or the visual idea or if I am working with a specific designer to actually showcase their collection. With personal projects the idea is more important to me than the clothes but obviously if working for a designer then you need to focus on showing the collection as well. I think this approach bares similarities to how I do music videos.

With music videos, the idea/concept always becomes secondary to how the artist is presented.

How do you see the future of fashion film ?

I’m not sure how the future will be but I know how I would want it to turn out.
I would love to see a stronger move towards actual content. Director-driven fashion films. Less ‘moving photographs’ as I like to call them. Whilst these type of films can be beautiful, I personally don’t find it very interesting to make them or to watch them. Seeing someone swishing around for 3 minutes gives me nothing.

I think its far more interesting to watch something more abstracted, a story or mood film that tells me more about the ideas behind the collection. A well crafted film that really brings you into the world of the designer and the collection rather than just straight up showing the clothes.

What is the last thing which stimulated you ?
Charles and Ray Eames.

Elisha Smith-Leverock

Interview by Filep Motwary & Antoine Asseraf.

Benjamin Esser by Filep Motwary.

Since the release of your debut album back in 2009, what are the changes to the way you perceive your own music, and how it has evolved?

Benjamin Esser: I think the beauty in first records is naivety, which you can never regain.
But I feel a lot less pressure in a lot of ways with this second one, there’s a confidence that means I can let the music take its time.
I think people might immediately assume that I ‘discovered’ a whole genre of music that I’d never listened to before. But that’s not true, I’ve always been into bands like Cluster, Tones on Tail, Suicide, Add N To X (mixtape – coming soon!)…

What is inspiration for you ? Do you consider yourself as eccentric?

I find inspiration in repetition.
Inspiration for me isn’t about looking outwards its about looking further inwards – into the core of things.
No I definitely wouldn’t say I’m an eccentric, I guess I have my own ways of doing things. But everyone does.

People would tell you my views on organization and timekeeping are fairly abstract. I strongly disagree.

ESSER performing at Hyères 2012 Fashion & Photo Festival, with Stage of the Art.

What are you looking for in music? And how do you measure success?

I’m looking for complete submergence.

What does it mean to you to have an image change, beyond the need to convey a change musically?
Do you care about fashion or style?

Well I completely agree with artists like David Bowie. His concept of reinvention was incredible and the conceptual way he approached his records is a big influence for me.

Of course the amazing thing about fashion is anyone can become whoever they want to be – I could be a different person by tomorrow.

ESSER performing at Hyères 2012 Fashion & Photography Festival, by René Habermacher.

How is it to work with your wife – when she’s directing you around, when she’s making videos for other music acts or when you’re the one scoring her films?

I like it.
People always asume that you can’t be objective if you’re working with someone close to you, but I think it’s the complete opposite. We work together constantly actually and I’ll always ask her opinion on whatever I’m doing and vice-versa.
In fact we’re the only ones that can give each other honest opinions because we know each other so well.

As far as working on music for her films, she always has a really strong idea about what she wants. Which is great. It’s often a reinterpretation of a song (“I want muscle,” Donna Summers). So it’s always satisfying to do that.

What is the last thing that stimulated you?
Charles and Ray Eames.

COMING SOON : II : Elisha.

ESSER, ENMITY on Green United Music.

Thank you: Laurence Alvart, Pierre LeNy.

Submit your 30 seconds maximum video before April 1st for a chance to have it featured in the installation, which launches April 27th at the 2012 Hyères Fashion + Photo Festival,  next exhibits by  Yohji Yamamoto, Jasons Evans, and Inez van Laamswerde + Vinoodh Matadin.

Imagine what lies beyond the wall of the PILLORY installation.

All submitted videos must be
no more than 30 seconds long,
from one angle/point of view,
and submitted before April 1st, 2012.

Fore more info and video guidelines: contest@thestimuleye.com

MONSIEUR CHYPRE
A SHORT FILM WITH EROTOKRITOS
by Antoine Asseraf Asseraf & René Habermacher
with VOGUE ITALIA

I Could Be Yours - Fall/Winter 2011/12 presentation, filmed by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher.

Antoine Asseraf: Did your presentation go well this week?

Jean-Paul Lespagnard: It went really well. The feedback is really good.  It was very difficult to organize, obviously, but as I always say “we learn from our mistakes”. ha ha. In the beginning I wanted to do something simple and small and in the end, I found myself doing 7 shows in one day! My assistants tell me all the time that when I tell them something, I think that it is really simple, when in fact it isn’t. So when I tell them that we are going to do something difficult, but that we will succeed, they know that it is going to be a mountain of work! But really really happy with how everything went. The people from the press are really enthusiastic. The people that came by the showroom are very enthusiastic too. I had some buyers–one from a boutique in NY, one from a boutique in Hong Kong, among others.

Was it complicated to plan?

It was a personal choice to put myself in the “off” on presentations by appointment. And i think that I will continue to do that. Because, this idea of doing 6 shows in one day was difficult and I launched myself into a crazy adventure, but I really want to do it again. I think its great because people can come whenever they want to. There is something that I like about not having chairs, it was standing only. I think that the next time, what I could do is have little portable stools for people that want to sit down. I just really like the idea of something spontaneous like what we did. So something that I am going to work on and try to perfect for next time. This defilé was meant as a way for me to come back after the festival and to present my work to buyers. When the buyers came to my showroom, they said “its great, its fresh, we have never seen this before, but we are not sure where to place your work for the moment” This is good actually because now, they have 6 months to digest what they say and to think about ideas for where to place my collection and about where my stuff fits in with other designers. I really very very happy with my fashion week in Paris!

You think that they will put your collection with the collection of….?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know because there are pieces that are very constructed, such as the things with the pieces with the pillow cases. There are people that made a comparison between my work and Lanvin. Also with Moschino, which I can understand. Some even found similarities between some of my pieces and Margiela. So, it is a wide range.

Tell me a bit about the collection.

The theme of the collection was based on a story that I wrote about a woman who was walking on a road, crossing through the forest at dawn–all of these details are very important–and who meets a very fancy japanese truck. The truck is a normal truck that they transformed with structural elements and lights etc.  The interior of the truck is baroque, with baroque tapestries and fabrics and crystal chandeliers. I think it is interesting to imagine the technological exterior of the truck and the classical interior. So the idea of the collection was to fuse together this woman, who is a bourgeoise of the countryside, and this truck. Not the truck driver! The truck. haha.

So we saw this fusion in the structured shoulders on some of the pieces for example. Some of the pieces were transformable, such as a sweatshirt which could be transformed into a dress depending on it is zipped up.

There were a lot of things influencing the collection. What was great was the baroque theme, which in itself is an accumulation of many things. So, in the work, I researched this idea of accumulating a lot of things which didn’t necessarily relate to one another….however, they did relate. For example, in the collection there is a “brocard de soiree…” with gold lurex in it–very soft and chic. I also had a vinyl, sequined skirt–it is a fabric that is used to cover the seats in discotheques, which for me, referenced the …..of the truck. But when you put those two pieces together, it is two different worlds, but two worlds that can communicate. It is pretty bizarre and interesting.

Jean-Paul Lespagnard's 2008 Hyères collection starring Jacqueline. Video by Antoine Asseraf.

You seem to always have a story like this one…

That’s right, I try to as much as possible. I had Jacqueline, my French fry girl. This time, the woman in my story didn’t have a name. There was not a name that seemed to fit, so I didn’t want to choose a name just for the sake of choosing one.

You didn’t have a name for her but you gave all the girls the same look.

That is something that I always like. I like to have a sort of army of beautiful girls… I think that my next collection is going to speak about a group of people, who are sharing an experience. It’s not yet september and I am already starting to do research.

"25 Hyères" by Antoine Asseraf - excerpt. "Digging for Victory" installation by Ethan Hayes-Chute and Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

Caroline Daily : Would you maybe like to make films?

I think that I could make films with my collections. If you want, when I conceive of a collection, it is often a starting point for other things. I use the collection to inspire other artistic projects. For example, in Hyères last year, I started the nature-themed collection–I didn’t really have enough money at that time to develop an entire collection–so I developed a variety of silhouettes and as I was creating the collection, I was developing a story. The story is that during the night, in Brussels, I was coming out of a discotheque and I met a sorcerer who gave me magic seeds and who asked me what I dreamt of doing. I told her that my dream was to become a fashion designer. So she gave me the seeds and told me to spread them in the dirt so that they grow. So, I planted the seeds and then, they became trees. And when I cut the trees down, they became live beings. And these live beings became my assistants who would help me make the collection. So, in the collection, there were at least two silhouettes that looked like war camouflage, which reflected this idea of fighting a battle to get the collection finished and combined the idea of combat and the idea of nature.

I continued the nature theme through out the collection and also in the cabana that I created at the festival. The cabana was an installation at the festival and was in fact my studio, which I had moved from Brussels to Hyeres. And in the cabana, my “tree assistant” was helping me sew garments for the collection. I could have put anyone in the tree outfit, but it was very important that it be one of my assistants or one of my interns. We always put the designer on display and we forget to show the team behind the designer. So, it was important to put my assistant, who helped me with the collection, in the tree/camouflage battle outfit.

So, for this current collection with the truck, I am not sure what other projects it will generate, but I know that I would like to make some installations and to do a project with a photographer.

"Ce Jeu" by Yelle. Video by Yoann Lemoine. Styling by Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

So, Yelle came to you with some ideas…

I met Julie just after the festival, right when she was about to make a new video for their song “Ce Jeu”. A friend of mine, Yoann Lemoine,  was directing the video and he introduced Julie to my work and she really like it. So she contacted me to do the styling on the video. After that, she had a tour the US and she asked me to collaborate on the costumes for it. After that, we stayed in contact and most recently, they asked me to create the costumes for their album “Safari Disco Club”. They told me what they wanted. It was a really interesting collaboration because there was a real exchange and sharing of ideas. They showed me images and explained why they liked certain things and I told them that I liked certain things too and showed them plenty of references, some Belgian. We constructed something together for the album art. And I think that we will continue to collaborate. We have already started to talk about other projects… merchandising….

When I spoke to them the other day, I asked what the visual concept was for the album Safari Disco Club. They said that it was a mix of fun and elegance….

That also describes my universe: making a link between fun and elegance. With Julie, we talked a lot about how I wanted her to show her elegant side now. For example, the other day she went to the Castelbajac show and beforehand, she came by the showroom to try on different outfits. We had a lot of outfits that were funny, like the pieces that we used for the video “Ce Jeu”. But we decided on something different, something more elegant. Something that is “the new Julie”. There is always humor in the outfits, like the clogs and the pendant with my portrait on it, but there is something more refined about the look.

They have grown so much (Yelle) and I am so proud of them. I admire the fact that after putting out their first album with a huge record label, they have decided to leave that label to do something on their own, with their own vision.  Its really great. Visually it’s better and we can see how much they are growing as artists. I identify with this–I am still a young designer, but I feel that we have a similar path.

"Don't Worry Bee Happy" Making-Of.

Are you engaged in other collaborations at the moment?

Yes, there are other artistic collaborations that I am working on. I am leaving on the 16th of March to go to San Francisco to make the costumes for a dance performance, choreographed by of an American choreographer with whom I work often. Her name is Meg Stuart. When she shows her work in Paris, it is usually at the Theatre de la Ville. She is based in Berlin. I also have project with another American choreographer named Jeremy Wade. He is also based in Berlin.

We would like to hitchhike for two weeks in the United States dressed up like bees!  I recently did a photo exposition where I photographed dressed like a bee, Maya the Bee, on top of the Mayan Temples. I wanted to comment on tourism in Mexico. Also I thought, “when you go to Disneyland, you dress in Mickey Mouse ears. Well, when you go to the Mayan Temples, you dress like Maya the Bee”.  I was also exploring how people present themselves as tourists in another country. Whenever I am working on an artistic project, I think often about the questions around identity and how I present myself as an artist.

For the moment, I have all of those projects and I have the new collection which I have already started working on. And while I am in San Francisco, I am going to take a tour of the Hearst Castle, which was the inspiration for the Xanadu Mansion in Citizen Kane. Apparently it is the “Vatican” of the United States and I really want to see it.

Meg Stuart project, costumes by Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

You have a lot of costume projects? Do you want to stay in pret-a-porter fashion or could you see yourself solely doing costume work?

I don’t think that I could see myself only doing costume work. I like to be involved in a lot of projects at once–it is the constant creativity and the creative mix that interests me. If I am not being creative, my life has no meaning.

Caroline Daily: What was the first article or review you had in the press?

The first article on me was in the newspaper of my hometown. I had done an expo in the stairwell of the town hall and it received a lot of different reactions. My piece was part of an expo for the artists of the village. They invited me to put a piece in the show and my piece was an installation that was three meters high of a woman who transformed into a tree.

Can you talk about the clogs on which you collaborated with Nathalie Elharrar of LaRare ?

We wanted to have a “countryside” element to the styling of my collection and that is why I wanted to have a futurist-looking clog. So I collaborated with Nathalie Elharrar, who has a brand of shoes called Larare. I really wanted to have something traditional that had a futuristic side and something that had a hand-made spirit. In the collection, I wanted to find a balance between something robotic and something artisanal. I wanted to highlight the artisanal side with a pair of wooden clogs.

What is the last thing that stimulated you?

Honestly, I see things that stimulate me every day. Often it is something that I have never seen and I think “wow”. Something that is stimulating me at the moment is something that I saw about a year ago in Brussels–it was show of Romeo Castellucci “Inferno, Paradiso and Purgatorio” I would like to use that for my next collection.

Thanks to Lynsey Peisinger for her precious help transcribing and translating this interview.

Still from Justin Anderson's Chase film, by René Habermacher.

Garden for Emporio Armani, starring Theoharis Iannidis & Dafne

Chase for Armani/EA7

Bike for Armani Jeans

The last thing which stimulated Justin:

On Friday night- I watched a film by Jean Pierre Melville- Army of Shadows.
It had a big effect on me. It is brutal but very paired down without any melodrama. None of the actors either particularly young or good looking, the direction is tight and the subject really tough. It is about the French resistance to German occupation- it is about death, betrayal and torture.

The film was gripping was absolutely masterful.

What I love is that I discovered this film because I loved the way Alain Delon looked in LE FLIC in his raincoat – which then led me to such a film. I feel very lucky to live in a time in which it is so easy to discover these kinds of gems and I love the fluid way you can to move from one to the other.

Armani Chase Trilogy
Directed by Justin Anderson
Creative Direction by Antoine Asseraf / The Stimuleye
Production: Ponyboy / Queen of Spades

Starring: Theoharris Ioannidis, Dafne, Aline, Nastasia and Bo.

Styling/Fashion director: Isabelle Kountoure
Assisted by Tui Lin

Hair: Panos
Make-up: Yannis Siskos

Producer: Jason Scanlon
DoP: Ross McLennan
Local producers: Angela Tsepas/Andreas Mitsopoulos

He’s already worked with the likes of Richie Havens, Yelle, Katy Perry, Moby and Taylor Swift, done short films for kids, and been rewarded for a film about a dick graffiti… And now he’s releasing his first EP, IRON.

IRON EP cover, illustration by Stephan Balleux.

ANTOINE ASSERAF: The music video for IRON – is it strange to make a music video for yourself ?

YOANN LEMOINE aka WOODKID: Not that strange, because as soon as I started the WOODKID project, I knew I wanted to make images, so it made sense with the video, and it was the first time I could make a movie and control all the parameters, with a budget and without at the same time being told what I could and couldn’t do. Being both the client and the director was a crazy opportunity, so I’m super happy with the result.

To direct and to make music is a bit similar, emotionally you are touching the same sensible points, it’s just a different medium of expression.

You have a material theme going on – you are the WOOD kid, the single is IRON, the tentative album name wood and CRYSTAL…

The project is always evolving, but I really like attention to textures, I made a film once on the texture of rocks, in IRON there is a lot of marble, black smoke.  I love looking at textures and the emotions they create. The color, the complexity, what they evoke, mystical and dark things.

So did the song or the visual come first ?

I’ve had an image in my head for this project for a long time, I wanted to make a statement about heroic fantasy, not in a kitschy, elf and trolls way, but to explore what Tolkien, Final Fantasy,  and Matthew Barney did. How you create a world with social codes, in a documentary sort of way, with specific imagery, dogmas, political parties, currency, dresscodes, ethnic groups, races, geography… How you recreate these codes in a parallel world. And how to do this in a way that is less cheesy than we are used to seeing in heroic fantasy, more intellectual…

 IRON music video, directed and sung by Yoann Lemoine.

You once said on Facebook (laughs) that you were afraid that one day you would have to make a choice between music and directing, do you still believe in that ?

If I have to choose, it will be a matter of scheduling.

So a temporary choice ?

Temporary but… you never know how things evolve.

I come from illustration, and a series of circumstances led me to move to directing without ever deciding “I’m quitting illustration”, but I never came back to it… I just never had the occasion to do it again, a road built itself in another direction.

How did you make the transition between illustration and film direction ?

First it was animation films for kids, because I come from 3D, then I felt the need to make live films, with actor direction, a quality of photography, so I bought myself a camera and started making my own films. Then it turned into commissions, and I transmitted into real shooting my desire to compose images and artistically direct scenes….

At first jobs were appealing to your 3D and special fx know-how, but now on the Taylor Swift video you had no post-production special effects…

It’s all experimenting. What I’m trying to do in my career and in my artistic development is to reconcile a beautiful image, detailed and in good taste, with fashion references, in the air of the times, that people want to see, with a type of narration usually seen in Hollywood films. Postproduction effects, a bit WOW, symbolic narratives with visual trips… It’s part of my identity.

But I’m no Gondry either.

Yoann Lemoine in Erotokritos FW 2011. Photo by René Habermacher.

It’s as if there were different Yoann Lemoine signature looks – the 3D look, the natural video look, the fashion film look…

Less and less… What’s complicated, is that at some point you ask yourself “who am I ? what am I trying to say ?” and you realize that in everything you did before, when you were in the insouciance of discovery, you were leaving hints about what you wanted to do next. You did it in the moment, visions, and then you see it’s all linked, and little by little it becomes more uniform and it’s a battlehorse, that can take many forms, but always with a certain common ground. That’s what I believe will be my common ground — a relationship between a beautiful image and the impact of effects that you’re not used to seeing in fashion film or music videos. An important array of means but not used a cheesy hollywood way.

And yet you’re not exactly anti-Hollywood…

There’s good and bad in everything.
What I like in a fashion film is the demands of the image and its actuality.
In a Hollywood film, it’s the power of visual effects.
Together, it makes an unlikely mix.

LIGHTS fashion film for Vogue Italia - Light Series. Filmed at The Stimuleye headquarters.

How do you think having made your own music will affect your relationship with the artists for whom you make music videos ?

Well what’s changed already is that I have a lot less time so I can’t accept as many things, so I turn down a lot of projects. And I’ll only do projects that I’m really into and are in the path of the visual statement I’m trying to make. So right now my own music videos are my priority, it comes before anything else, because they’re the films where I have the most means of expression.

When did the musical project start — the song IRON goes back quite a long way…

I started 5 years ago… it takes some time… IRON was an old demo, which was completely turned upside down and re-worked, the lyrics changed 3 or 4 times, it had all the names you could imagine – TWO TIMES then TOO BAD…

Music takes a lot of time.

It started with Richie Havens offering you a ukulele….When did you know that music was more than a hobby ?

It came really little by little. At first it was kind of a joke, then I realized I loved singing, that I had a voice… People around me supported me…Things happen quickly, but not suddenly. It’s not an overnight process.

You trained quite a lot to play live, was it a shock for you ? When you’re used to 3D and illustration which are very studied, or even live shooting where you can do multiple takes…There’s no takes in live performance.

I actually did some theater when I was a kid, so I was used to the stage. I lost it but regained it very quickly.  I was very happy to re-discover this feeling of peril and excitement, of real and immediate stakes, which you don’t have in film.

BALTIMORE'S FIREFLIES live at Montfort 2010. Filmed by Antoine Asseraf, René Habermacher and Christophe Deroo.

You can tell that the music video is a personal project, but how about the music itself?

I want to avoid going too much in personal songwriting, I prefer having more epic and mystical things on the album. I feel like transposing my universe in a unique world, accessible through music. Even though a lot of the material relates to love in a covert sort of way, I keep my distance.

So this video is for the EP, what’s next ?

We’re waiting to see what the response is. This video has been 7 months of hard work in the making, it’s drained me completely. I see the projet as a fresco, so what I can assure you is that we will continue the imagery, it’s only the first episode, and I will develop what I have to say, trying to have returning characters.

But right now I can’t say if the next video will come from the EP or from an independent single before the release of the album.

Let’s be optimistic and say it will come out before the end of 2011.

What’s the last thing that stimulated you ?

Seeing THE FIGHTER at the cinema, for an American movie I found the mood and the artistic direction very British. Stylistically, it’s amazing, this sorority of 90’s chicks, very middle America, wild brushings… Some beautiful and emotional images, very well played, especially Christian Bale.

You want to make a feature film yourself, right ?

Yes I’m working on it, still writing – homosexuality, violence, USA, 80’s/90’s — it touches about topics which I appreciate. I’m working with a writer who’s injecting many 90’s references, especially on a musical level, which help me situate the story in a real context. I would like to film this project in the USA before 2013.

Caroline Daily: what is the first film which made an impression on you ?

Antoine Asseraf: The most striking memory for me is David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
It was my first Lynch, and the mix of glamour and goth, the changes in personality, the concept of looping, free intepretation, all left me without voice.

With David Lynch, there is always a staggering artistic direction, a mix of architecture, music, design and casting which create entirely novel worlds.

In a different register, there is also Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, which left a mark because it’s such a violent film, but with an “english” type of violence – very different from the hollywood violence to which i had grown accustomed.

cd: this film for erotokritos is filled with references to classic cinema, what are your cult movies ?

Well of course Lost Highway, you can find in “La Lutte De L’Amour” the splitting of personality between the blonde and the brunette, who may or may not be the same woman…

There is also a film I had seen for a class on cinema which had struck me by how conceptual it was : Suture, where the main character is perceived by the other characters as white is played by a black actor, which creates a very disturbing offset between the spectators and the film’s characters. I attempted to do something similar in “La Lutte De L’Amour” with the voice-overs, which get gradually describe the image less and less.

I really love all types of films, but as strange as it may seem, the films that have followed me around the most are the ones I saw dozens of times as a teenager, and therefore not necessarily great classics… My classics are rather “The Addams Family,””Addams Family Values,””Priscilla Queen Of The Desert,” the films of John Waters and early Almodovar. Very kitsch, very camp comedies, whose one-liners still make me laugh. I think that’s why I couldn’t resist making a cheesy joke with “skull” and “skullhead.”

cd: why a struggle ? what is the message of this film which seems like a double-edged sword, between lightness and madness ?

At the heart of this film, there are Erotokritos’ moodboards, with pictures from Godard’s “Contempt,” but also the imaginary universe of his brand and above all, his name. The name “Erotokritos” comes from a famous epic poem of the Greek renaissance, and means more or less “struggle of love.” So I imagined that this could be the title of a Nouvelle Vague film about the vagaries of a Parisian couple…
It seemed essential to have a contrast, a tension (between “love” and “struggle”), to avoid falling into something too honeyed or too “costume drama.”

cd: for this film and in general, what are your sources of inspiration ?

For this film my point of departure was the trailer for Contempt.

 Each detail was thought out. With this short, I wanted to do something rich, that you could watch several times, noticing new details with each viewing. I’m a bit of graphic designer, so for the lettering, I used the actual letters of LE MEPRIS to write LA LUTTE DE L’AMOUR, while the conceptual discrepancy between voice and visual spoke to my advertising side.

Inspiration comes from all over, and sometimes it’s difficult to concentrate on one thing, so I try to ask myself very down-to-earth questions : “what do we need,” “what are the strengths of the brand, the actors, the clothes,” “what tools are available.” It’s a bit the “Robert Rodriguez school of filming” : we have a car, two horses, a riffle and a belly-dancer – what kind of film can we build with all that ?

cd: what are your next projects ?

Well, there is the The Stimuleye.
I’m working on a series of interviews between Maria Luisa and different designers : Rick Owens, Haider Ackermann.
I’m working on a project for Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb perfume.
I have to finish this Buto-inspired film, filmed in December.
And I just did the creative direction for a series of fashion films for Armani, which should come out soon…