There was a few guys just going around in their life and having something there recording every second of their life in image. We are like completely freaking out because death. We think death is the end. We have another proposal. That proposal, and which is the most ancient proposal of humankind, is basically death is not the end.
I guess the process of image making itself is to do with preserving a moment, and creating a form of immortality through an image. But we tend to use WWe talk about Alan Lomax, we talk about great researchers of the 20th century, and how much this is important to record. But I think we live in a very different time. We are basically obsessed with the past, obsessed with sort of like a better past.
We are actually nowadays in the mission of creating new paths, creating new forms of cultures, new forms of music, new forms of rituals. And I wanted to know a bit about the actual process because Do you basically make everything just on your own? You must need people to help you record sound or how does it actually work when you arrive in a new country? Well, take the example of Russia.
Last time I came here was six years ago. Six years ago I came to Russia because of that guy mostly, Bulat Khalylov. Thank you, brother, and pleasure to see you here really, man. Basically, we talked about doing some recordings, and very quickly I explained to him that I could do most of the recordings by myself with his help.
And so we went around for two months and something. We went to [ unintelligible ]. We went to Ossetia, went to Chechnya, went to Dagestan, went to Kalmykia and even more. And then I was in [ unintelligible ] with my friend Tatiana and all those recordings were made in a very simple way.
Basically, I have a camera, and I have microphones. Bulat was helping me, of course, first to translate and go around. That is always a very important person, doing that bridge, you know, and it was kind of like channeling all this culture towards me, and in a sense he was also helping me, basically placing the microphone in space.
And there we go. And I love the accident. I love the fact that we are imperfect human beings. And I do believe that looking for perfection, in terms of cinema especially, has always been a trap to me. I never succeed to create a film that I have in mind. So I try not to have any idea, and create something that has to be created. I do not know what the film is going to look like, but if the film wants to happen, if the film had its own consciousness, it would happen and be created and I will help this to happen.
We did not really plan things much in advance. At what point did you realize that you wanted to film religious rituals? Not just music but rituals and events that had a kind of deeper significance?
Or did that just happen? While I growing up in Paris, and when I was in my twenties, I used to go to a lot of concerts obviously.
Mostly rock, pop, indie music. And that was my relationship and my knowledge of music. That basically music was something that people play on stage while other people listen drinking a beer. That was it, basically. I would go see a show, you know, amazing stuff. This is the greatest expression of music now. And basically, very simply, one night, especially one night, I was in Cairo in Egypt, and someone took me to a ritual.
And I remember entering that little street I could hear the music coming from farther, the percussion, and the voices. And then I entered this place, and it was not only musically stunning, it was something else. It was basically music played for the gods.
It was music played for healing. It was music played for another reason than entertaining and it changed my life. It blew my mind, because I did not grow up with that knowledge that actually music was made for that.
But then I decided to be on the road, and to really question the fact, where is music coming from? Why do we play music? And then of course you realize, especially if you are lucky, that I had the privilege to go to all of those places In a very punk way, though.
I never had the real money to do any of this, but I always found a way to do it. Then you realize people play music basically to call the gods, that is basically why it is there from the very beginning. Music is there to harmonize with nature. And I wanted to explore this deeply. A lot of your films have been made in South America. Are we going to watch that one? I wanted to show We did a little selection of short films.
Of very simple ones. And I actually wanted to start with a little film. Back in the days, I think it was like nine years ago I did that one. I was spending some days in Buenos Aires, and the story goes that I got invited into a show one of the first days I was there, and things got a bit chaotic for me that night. And all I could remember the next morning was this beautiful melody, which goes like [ sings ]. I want to film that song. I finally found a band.
We are ready. And I just showed up at the bar, and we did this little song. Beautiful people. Again the circle, that dance, all of us together in a grand circle. And in a sense, which can encapsulate as well very much my entire experience in Buenos Aires, all compressed into one shot. Sorry to ask this technical question but, the sound is so rich, and it even seems to correspond slightly, it seems to be moving around.
How do you do it? Do you have somebody setting up separately? How do you do it Bulat? This was very simple, right. And I never get obsessed with technical aspects, and I think the trap, on many levels, is that we get obsessed. You could say we are all turning a little bit too geeky in our relationship to those tools.
As I said before, a really deep education on how to use those technical tools, especially in the field of cinema, we should be very careful of not getting obsessed, of too much knowledge of the technique. When people ask me anything about camera, I have no idea. Same thing for the microphones. I think you have to be very simple. Incredibly simple actually. How much research to you tend to do when you go to a country? Or do you try to avoid that planning?
I think the goal is really to avoid any planning. So last week I was in Gabon in Africa. You know? You have to let it go. That is the problem of the white world. Everything is like in a sense very carefully prepared on some levels, but to the point that it allows you this complete freedom on the spot.
And really, magic happens. In the way you are attracted to this place or that place without really planning it. People invite you into amazing things.
And this magic happens only if you are really able to let it go at some time. How do we step on that? We have to At least for me, I had to find this balance. And working more and more towards sort of freeing myself from my intellectual relationship to reality. To shut off the brain, basically. You have traveled to all kinds of places around here, on several different trips right? Well actually, I came here, I came to Russia the first time 19 years ago.
I wish I could have shown that video. Moon set out to make films the way a photographer takes pictures: often in a single take, often with just himself, sans crew. Well note quite done. But Moon shrugs that part off. I care about people making [films]. You were either in the band cashing the checks , or in the audience buying the records. But with the rise of Internet comes the rise of the amateur. Incredibly talented artists can increasingly be found everywhere, doing it for the love of doing it.
And he sees his own work as part of that trend. But in a world with more than 40 million iPhones, does size matter in the same way it used to? They still care passionately about building the largest audience possible on the biggest screen available.
We all can learn something from each and every film Mr. Moon, these artist and La Blogotheque has produced. That music, art and cinema are an important vortex in the culture and the enviroments of every community in this world.
What Mr. Moon and these artist, musicians are providing is something we all strive for in our everyday struggles: peace, unity and freedom. This is about survivial. We need, and must, want creativity to continue in our communities.
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