Michel Gondry, Do It Yourself

If Méliès had a son, it would be Michel Gondry. A brilliant jack-of-all-trades whose eccentric talent convinced the creative elite of international pop music to entrust him with his music videos (Björk, the Rolling Stones, Daft Punk, The White Stripes, Beck, etc.) before allowing him to chart his own course in Hollywood—without ever renouncing his rather crazy style—and to become one of the rare Oscar-winning French filmmakers (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
From hand to eye, Michel Gondry has been offering us for thirty years to seize what surrounds us to create and tell the world. A work that is a constant praise of wonder through craftsmanship: whether we approach his relationship to music and his beginnings as a videographer; the notion of magic inherent in his conception of the image; its roots in childhood and the world of dreams; the paradox of his Hollywood career; and the humanist ambition of its craftsmanship... which is also a political act. Do it yourself.

Punk teenager dreaming of Méliès, Gondry has woven in three decades an admirable, fascinating, imperfect body of work. The brilliant French underground clipper, turned American filmmaker, has managed to escape the embarrassing stereotype of the little French employee in the beautiful country of Hollywood, because his cinema lives elsewhere: he is as much Franco-American as he is Hindu and Lapp. He is world. From a long-term interview, woven from exhilarating archives and testimonies from the talents that inhabit his work, welcome to the marginal, hand-made universe of a tightrope walker of dreams, time and memory; a work that bears in its flesh, with pride, the disturbed world it describes.

PRODUCTION 1: De Bannes Olivier - O2B FILMS
89, Rue Du Rocher
75008 – Paris, France
Tel. +33 680016522
olivierdebannes@o2bfilms.com
http://www.o2bfilms.com

PRODUCTION 2: Accard Robin, Philippe Savine - The Red Ceiling
22, Rue Alphonse Baudin
75011 – Paris, France
Tel. +33 603001824
robin@trcfilms.com
http://www.trcfilms.com

LABORATORY: La Compagnie de l'Image
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: Arte France

WORLD SALES / ITALIAN DISTRIBUTION: Clanet Anaîs – Reservoir Docs
2, Rue Charles Renouvier
75020 – Paris, France
Tel. +33 683221806
anais@reservoirdocs.net

PRESS OFFICE: Clanet Anaîs – Reservoir Docs
2, Rue Charles Renouvier
75020 – Paris, France
Tel. +33 683221806
anais@reservoirdocs.com