Fashion and film drink from the same wellspring of glamour, fantasy, design and visual art. They share the same ancestral influence and the same uncanny ability to both mirror and push the bounds of everyday reality. Their marriage isn't new, but now for the first time it will become evident on the big screen.
- ELLE FASHION FILM FESTIVAL 2013 runs from Sept 10-15 at SFX Cinema, Emporium. Tickets cost 150 baht per seat, with 184 seats available per movie. An art installation will be displayed as a part of the festival at Fashion Avenue, 1st floor, Emporium. Visit www.ellethailand.com or www.facebook.com/ELLEThailand
Post International Media managing director Sirimon Na Nagara, Post Publishing president and COO Supakorn Vejjajiva, and SF Corporation’s deputy managing director Suvannee Chinchiewchan, at the press conference of Elle Fashion Film Festival.
From Sept 10-15, Elle Thailand will host the Elle Fashion Film Festival, marking the first movie-fest in Thailand on the theme of fashion.
Post International Media managing director Sirimon Na Nagara said with Elle magazine advancing into its third decade soon, and after the "Burst out Your Style" campaign earlier this year, she found that the brand is associated with various aspects of life through fashion. "Elle magazine is more than just a fashion magazine. It is a part of life and culture. We aim to be a fashion authority, and for us, fashion is all around. Film and fashion are inseparable - film influences fashion, and vice versa."
Fashion film festivals have taken place all around the world, from Croatia to South Korea and from the US to Japan, and the idea has been embraced by fashion and film crowds alike - and audiences who enjoy a thematic approach to movie-going.
Post International Media managing director Sirimon Na Nagara, Post Publishing president and COO Supakorn Vejjajiva, and SF Corporation’s deputy managing director Suvannee Chinchiewchan, at the press conference of Elle Fashion Film Festival.
While it is not easy to define a "fashion film", after hard work and months of preparation, nine films have been selected for the inaugural event, hand-picked by a five-person selection committee, namely Elle Thailand editor-in-chief Panu Sombatyanuchit, SF Corporation's Suwannee Chinchiawsharn, fashion stylist Araya Indra, Greyhound designer Jitsing Somboon and Bangkok Post film writer Kong Rithdee. None of the chosen films have been officially shown on the big screen in Thailand before (see sidebar for details).
Panu said that the nine films reflect fashion in different ways. "Blancanieves, for example, is a Spanish black-and-white silent film based on the fairy tale Snow White. Being black-and-white, we can see the silhouette without the depth that comes with colour, and we can see the mesmerising movement of clothes. A Single Man, the first film directed by Tom Ford, is full of fashion references in great detail. If you like fashion, you will tremendously enjoy these films."
Ultimately, the event is aimed at showing how fashion is accessible through lifestyle, according to Panu. "Fashion is not just on the runways. There are so many ways to look at it, and film is one of them."
Sirimon hopes the event, which will take place annually from now on, will inspire Thai people to try and make films that reflect fashion elements as well. "This year, we feature movies from France, Spain, Canada, the US and China. I wish to see Thai films in the list in the future, and I hope that this event serves as an inspiration for Thai people to embrace fashion and enjoy it through their own interpretation."
Feast for the eyes
By Kong Rithdee
The nine films in the first edition of the Elle Fashion Film Festival explore the diverse roles and influences that fashion has on filmmaking - and vice versa. There are films about designers, and films in which the style of clothes define the style of the film, the art direction of the story, or shape the personality of the characters. In all, it's a feast for the eyes - as well as inspiration for the mind. Here is a brief look at each of the nine films.
A Single Man
Directed by Tom Ford
Tues, Sept 10 at 8pm
- This is Tom Ford's directorial debut, and movie fans - ready at first to dismiss it as a vanity project - have since clamoured for the former Gucci and YSL designer to get behind the camera again. Colin Firth plays George, the single man of the title, a gay professor racked by the death of his lover. The story is heartbreaking, and the design of the film is a reflection of the main character's mind: lavish, aloof, impeccably tasteful, visually rapturous. Everything in the film - a gun, a glass, a car - looks polished, classy, genteel, and at the same time, they look sad, like something you realise you'll see for the last time. Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man takes place during a day in George's life, and though the film came out in 2009, any opportunity to see this beautiful film on the big screen is truly special.
Blancanieves
Directed by Pablo Berger
Wed, Sept 11 at 8pm
- Like a hazy dream unearthed from the attic of the Brothers Grimm, Blancanieves - Snow White in Spanish - is a re-telling of the well-known fairy tale in black-and-white, with the backdrop of a bullfighting ring and matador bravura in rural Spain. It's also a silent film, devoid of words but rich in style and cinematic conceits. Snow White here is an orphaned girl whose matador father is reduced to a helpless derelict in the house of - yes - the evil stepmother. Fleeing oppression at home, the girl ends up with the seven dwarves and soon shines as a young, fearless matador. The poisoned apple will make its entrance, of course, but Blancanieves is a film of casual hypnotism and carnivalesque elegance. The period fashion and billowing matador's cape easily sweep us up in its swirl from start to finish. This was Spain's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last year.
I Am Love
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Thurs, Sept 12 at 8pm
- We are all love, aren't we? Or we want to be after watching this sensual, operatic, aristocratically designed and Mediterraneanly erotic Italian romance starring Tilda Swinton as a mother who falls for a friend of her son. The period is around 2000, but the visual spirit of I Am Love is that of a Visconti film from the 1950s. The film takes place mostly in the mansion of a wealthy industrialist family that's facing generational changes - and the clothes these rich and lost people wear are just unforgettable. They're not a collection of swaggering, show-off items, but clothes that speak, imply and complement the status, the personality, and the hot-and-cold emotional turbulence of the characters. And they were designed by none other than Raf Simons. The film came out in 2009, but this is the first time that we'll get to see it in the full, larger-than-life splendour of the cinema screen.
L'armour fou
Directed by Pierre Thoretton
Fri, Sept 13 at 8pm
- This documentary opens with lengthy footage of Yves Saint Laurent's televised speech announcing his retirement from fashion. It also sets the calm, detached, slightly elegiac tone of the film. Made after Laurent's death in 2008, this is a rare look behind the life of a prominent artist and the world's foremost couturier. The story is told by YSL's partner in life and in business, Pierre Berge, who walks us through the grimmer reality - his battles with drugs and depression, for instance - and finally to the majestic feast of the eyes that only makes what has come before feel more tragic, more heart-melting: the auction of the immense and beautiful collection of art pieces and objects that YSL and Berge had amassed throughout the decades. We often associate fashion with beauty and fleeting impressions; the rich, lush and unhappy life of Saint Laurent will give us a different glimpse behind the catwalk of the fashion world.
Face
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
Sat, Sept 14 at 2pm
- Face was partly funded by the Louvre and filmed in the historic French museum, and while we can attempt to describe its plot - a Taiwanese director travels to the Louvre to film an adaptation of Salome - that would be futile and superfluous. Face, directed by Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang, is made up of the elements of pure cinema: faces, landscapes, mood, the snow that drips from the shoulder to the ground of Jardin Tuileries, on into oblivion. The clothes here are exquisite, the stuff of tasteful fantasy, the physical manifestation of dreams in a film that seems ready to drift into abstraction. Besides Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng, it also stars a roster of legends such as Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Laetitia Casta and more.
Color Me Love
Directed by Alexi Tan
Sat, Sept 14 at 5pm
- The film takes us deep into the Beijing fashion scene, which is as colourful (meaning dirty and beautiful) as any. Small-town girl Wang Xiaofei finds work at a high-end fashion magazine in the Chinese capital. Thrown into the middle of the whirlwind of a country that's transforming and the fashion scene that's spinning as fast, she rubs shoulders and spars with movers and shakers in a world fed by vanity and creativity.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
Directed by Jan Kounen
Sat, Sept 14 at 7.30pm
- Two personalities who revolutionise their respective arts meet and plunge into a passionate affair. Designer Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) and composer Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen, always immensely watchable) are two of the most spectacular creative forces of the early 20th century - one deconstructs fashion, the other put a modernist spell on music - but the story of their fleeting romance has hardly been told before. The film begins with Stravinsky's historic The Rite Of Spring premiere in Paris in 1913, with Chanel in the audience spellbound, or perhaps realising that the composer of such a sharp, angular piece must be her soulmate. After World War I, Chanel invites Stravinsky, his wife, and their four children to stay at her villa, and as the two meet again and look into each other's eyes, the rest - as they say in music - is noise.
Heartbeats
Directed by Xavier Dolan
Sun, Sept 15 at 3pm
- From a precocious Canadian filmmaker (who also stars), Heartbeats is so bold, inventive, provocative and full of edgy verve that you'd either want to kiss the director or slap him, or maybe both. Xavier Dolan directed this 2011 film when he was 21; he also stars as Francis in this dizzyingly ping-pong-like love triangle between a gay man, a straight woman, and a blond hunk. The three are close friends, which makes everything more complicated and maddening. Plus Dolan fashions his story in a heavy visual style, including scenes of documentary-like interviews and catwalk-inspired interludes in which his young and attractive cast strut around in fashionable outfits. Love hurts, but it helps when you're young, beautiful, speak French and still look good in your clothes.
Farewell My Queen
Directed by Benoit Jacquot
Sun, Sept 15 at 8pm
- Versailles, July 1789. The French Revolution is about to write a chapter in the history of Europe. Set in the palace of Louis XVI, where the people, the furniture and the costumes are larger than life, the film is told mainly through the eyes of Marie Antoinette's loyal and sexy servant Sidonie (Lea Seydoux, the hottest French actress of the year). As the uprising approaches the gilded gate and the ''beheading list'' is circulated among the palace staff, the panic, turmoil and emotional drama between the queen and her coterie of helpers are intensified. Unlike most starched period dramas, Farewell My Queen moves briskly, with fluid camera movements and sometimes nervous energy. Diane Kruger plays the queen, and Virginie Ledoyen plays her nenemis.
