Vincent Moon
Vincent Moon (real name Mathieu Saura, born 25 August 1979)[1] is an independent filmmaker, photographer, and sound artist from Paris.[2] He was the main director of the Blogotheque's Take Away Shows, a web-based project recording field work music videos of indie rock related musicians as well as some notable mainstream artists like Tom Jones, R.E.M., or Arcade Fire.
Vincent Moon
Filmmaker, experimental ethnographer, video director
Vincent Moon is known for traveling around the globe with a camera in his backpack, documenting local folklores, sacred music and religious rituals, for his label Collection Petites Planètes. He works alone or with people he finds on the road, and most of the time without money involved in the projects. He shares much of his work, films and music recordings, for free on internet, under Creative Commons license. In 2009 his documentary on artist Kazuki Tomokawa, La Faute Des Fleurs, won the Sound & Vision Award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, and his film Esperando el Tsunami was nominated for the same award in 2011.
Music career[edit]
Early Period (2000–2005)[edit]
Growing up in Paris, Vincent Moon studied photography for 3 years at the Atelier Reflexe in Montreuil, where he met the photographers Michael Ackerman and Antoine d’Agata, who informed Vincent Moon's experiments of style//approach and visual experiments. Working as a photographer at the time, he used to put his photos in motion, using simple slideshow techniques and music to tell stories. In 2003, he started the photography blog Les Nuits de Fiume, documenting Parisian nightlife.
As a result of his encounter with the work of experimental filmmakers Peter Tscherkassky and Stephen Dwoskin, Vincent Moon started to move toward films in 2005. He made short films, mixing intimate storytelling experiment with various techniques, from super 8 to cellphone cameras. He was quick to grasp the various possibilities the internet offered for releasing and sharing his work online and freely. Getting closer and closer to the music world, he encountered the band The National in one of their shows in Paris. Their friendship gave birth to various projects, his photos being used on the cover of The National's third album, 'Alligator', and he made for them 2 music videos. At this time, he also initiated other projects related to music, directing lo-fi videos for Clogs, Sylvain Chauveau and Barzin.
