FR
OM
TOP
:
JÉ
RÉ
M
I
EB
O
U
I
LLO
N,
PR
I
S
C
I
L
LA
TE
L
MO
N
MY PASSION
Ear to
the Ground
A sonically inclined filmmaker
finds his beat in Brazil.
BY MARK ELLWOOD
Vincent Moon
in Paris, top,
and filming in
Brazil, below. The
sound-obsessed
director makes films
to “reach people.”
he French filmmaker Vincent
Moon made a name for himself
shooting dreamy, off-the-wall
music videos with the likes of
R.E.M. and Arcade Fire, often
positing gorgeous soundscapes in
offbeat locations, like a crowded Paris elevator
or a picnic table in the South of France.
Five years ago, he left his hometown of Paris
and began backpacking around the world with a
camera, seeking fresh inspiration. Arriving in
Brazil three years ago, he stumbled right upon it.
“It’s the best example on the planet of a very
alive culture,” Moon says in his rapid-fire,
Gallic-flavored English. “One that doesn’t have
any fear inside it. The people are open, their
hearts are open and they don’t see the color of
your skin. Everybody could be Brazilian. It’s the
only place in the world like that.”
Moon was so captivated by the country that
he moved there, establishing Rio de Janeiro as
home base with his wife, Priscilla. From there,
he began work on an intricate new film project,
T
Híbridos, inspired by the culture of his adoptive
home. Now his magnum opus is finally ready
to début. Describing it as “trance cinema,”
he intends this tribute to the music and culture
of Brazil as a “massive, beautiful answer to
the stresses of the world.”
Híbridos is composed of a hundred or
more vignettes that Vincent and Priscilla shot in
the country’s farthest corners, mostly hypnotic
recordings of religious rituals that examine the
relationship between spirituality and music.
Moon freely admits to an ulterior motive in
his process: “I envision life as a continuum of
stories. Making films for me is always a way to
dive into a new situation or a new experience—
I’ll make a film as a pretext to reach people.”
Take Moon’s trip to the northern port city of
Belem do Para, where the director shot the film’s
final sequence. He met an elder, or Madre Santo,
from Brazil’s Umbanda religion, which fuses
shamanism, Portuguese Catholicism and frag-
ments of African traditions. “I explained to her
what I was doing, that my goal was to celebrate
diversity on the planet through music,” he says.
“I never expected her to organize a ritual for me.”
Yet days later, he was filming a frenzied cer-
emony conducted by some three dozen adherents.
“One by one, to the sound of the drums, they
went into a trance and were possessed by
different types of spirits,” Moon recalls. “It
went on for hours, an incredible mix of sacred
and profane.” It was then that he realized that, as
he says, “Oh my gosh, the sacred doesn’t have to
be boring. The real trance music isn’t techno.”
For the next year or more, Vincent and Priscilla
plan to travel the world with Híbridos, where the
two will remix its contents live, like a mash-up of
director and DJ. After that, it's back to Brazil: No
longer a creative tumbleweed, Moon intends to
return to Rio once the film’s tour is complete.
“I feel comfortable wherever I go,” he says with
a shrug. “But everyone on the planet can learn
something from Brazil.” [
