Vincent Moon (real name Mathieu Saura) was born in Paris in 1979. At the age of 18, he decided he wanted to see it all, to learn things on his own, out of curiosity, even if that could have led to overfeedin. It took him almost ten years. From that experience, images came out, through photography first, which he studied under the influence of Michael Ackerman and Antoine D’Agata. At the time he used to put his photos in motion, using simple slideshows technics and music, to tell stories. Some years later, as he discovered the work of Peter Tscherkassky, he switched for good to video cameras. He made use of the Internet and developed various projects related to music, directing lo-fi videos for Clogs, Sylvain Chauveau, Barzin, The National. In 2006, overwhelmed by the beauty of Step Across the Border, directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, on the English guitarist Fred Frith, he created with Chryde the Take Away Shows project, La Blogotheque’s video podcast ( read more
Vincent Moon (real name Mathieu Saura) was born in Paris in 1979. At the age of 18, he decided he wanted to see it all, to learn things on his own, out of curiosity, even if that could have led to overfeedin. It took him almost ten years. From that experience, images came out, through photography first, which he studied under the influence of Michael Ackerman and Antoine D’Agata. At the time he used to put his photos in motion, using simple slideshows technics and music, to tell stories. Some years later, as he discovered the work of Peter Tscherkassky, he switched for good to video cameras. He made use of the Internet and developed various projects related to music, directing lo-fi videos for Clogs, Sylvain Chauveau, Barzin, The National. In 2006, overwhelmed by the beauty of Step Across the Border, directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, on the English guitarist Fred Frith, he created with Chryde the Take Away Shows project, La Blogotheque’s video podcast (takeawayshows.com).
This series of outdoor/wild documentaries consists in improvised video sessions with musicians, set in unexpected locations and broadcast freely on the web. In 4 years, he managed to shoot over two hundred clips with bands like REM, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Beirut, Grizzly Bear and many more. He perfected a style immediately recognizable of intimate, fragile, dancing and shadowing long shots, and at the same time changed the whole idea of what should be a music video. The whole ‘concept’ has been then exported throughout the world by lots of young filmmakers inspired by this natural organic approach to music.
While he was working on his Take Away shows, Vincent Moon also kept side projects, exploring other formats, experimenting relations between images and sounds. He directed a movie-essay on New York band The National titled A skin, A night, released in May 2008, was the main creator of the cult Miroir Noir, a 76min movie on The Arcade Fire and then worked closely with Michael Stipe and REM on several video and web projects related to their most recent album : the 48’ essay 6 Days, a documentary on the recording of Accelerate, the experimental ninety-days-long web project called 90nights (www.ninetynights.com), the video and unique website for the single Supernatural Superserious (www.supernaturalsuperserious.com/), and the acclaimed ‘This Is Not a Show’ (co-directed by Jeremiah, the other young French music director), a live movie on their Dublin performances. He released in November 2007, with Chryde the founder of La Blogotheque, a very unique film with Beirut, all the 12 songs from his new album being filmed in the streets of Brooklyn, in a fake one-take experiment (http://flyingclubcup.com/).
In his attempt to find new ways to film music, distancing himself from mainstream and commercial formats, he filmed in 2006 an average length gonzo film on the ATP Festival, Sketches from a nightmare, the first of a serie on this festival, and participated actively to the 90min film ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, released in 2009 to critical acclaims. In October 2007, Warp Films signed him up as a music video director.
Another part of his life is now dedicated to long portraits on cult and rare musicians – created with Antoine Viviani and Gaspar Claus, longtime collaborators, the serie ‘Musiciens de Notre Temps’ – two volumes have been finished so far, ‘Little Blue Nothing’ on the Havels, a mythical couple from Prague, and ‘La Faute des Fleurs’, often considered to be his best work, on Kazuki Tomokawa, extreme Japanese folk singer.
Another band he has been working with for a long time now are the cult post rockers from Glasgow, Mogwai – ‘Burning’, a 50’ live film on a performance they did in Brooklyn (co-directed by Nat Le Scouarnec), is a radical vision of live music, a unique attempt in documenting music on stage – something Moon clearly sees usually as a very limited exchange between cinema and music.
Exploring new forms and territories being not only a metaphor, Vincent Moon has been on the road for more than 2 years now, exploring the world with a camera in his backpack, and documenting his quest of sounds. He deals with visionary notions about images, society and new technologies on his blog (fiumenights.com), and is developing now a lifetime project: to document local energies around the world, as temporary areas, often one shot performances/films, where the limits between creators and audience is blurred as much as possible. Fighting against the idea of professionalism and trying to develop his work without money engaged, involving local creators as much as possible, dealing with the new notion of amateurism in the 21st century, a lot is still to come.
Photograph by Philippe Lebruman.
