Vincent Moon: Nomad Cinema

Vincent Moon films outside the box. A committed artist, he has dedicated the last 20 years of his life to filming the world’s music and traditions, with a distinct yet minimalist aesthetic. Vincent lives his life on the road; he estimates that he’s produced nearly 1,300 films in total. I reach him for a phone interview while he is in Morocco, filming rituals of Eid Al-Adha. Taking a break, sitting on a café terrace, he confides that he does not like video calls: “If I see someone I have to talk to on a screen while also seeing myself in silhouette at the top of the screen, it’s hell, I’m blocked by the images, and I can’t speak anymore!”

Moon, 44, built his aesthetic relationship with images by studying photography over 20 years ago in Paris, where he studied under important artists such as Michael Ackerman and Antoine d’Agata. He recalls how the blur in his own photographs created a desire to produce films focused on movements, lively scenes. At the time he was also immersed in the city’s pop and indie rock scenes and began filming the musicians that he was meeting: “They were my first attempts at films about music and I was wondering how to picture it differently.” One of his earliest successes was filming the US rock band The National when they were in Paris, which led Moon to film several official videos for the band, and to provide the heavily saturated photo that features on the cover for their album Alligator (2005). Yet, he was also inspired by improvised music, listening to Japanese harsh noise, extreme music, and musicians like Fred Frith… He remembers: “When I went to see these concerts, I felt possessed, it was a form of trance, but I didn’t know it was, as my society didn’t prepare people for that”

He was invited by his friend, Christophe ‘Chryde’ Abric, to develop a video series with Abric’s company Blogothèque. The series, launched in 2006, was named Concerts à Emporter (Take Away Shows) by Abric. The videos were short vignettes about mostly Anglo-Saxon rock and pop, the likes of Sufjan Stevens, St Vincent and Vampire Weekend. “I was filming handheld. This is how I started filming music, by being in the heart of the moment. I was filming renowned bands like REM, Beirut… One day I went on tour with Arcade Fire and I realised to what extent I could be eaten up by some kind of enormous machine, a management that was way beyond me. I decided that I needed a change. I took my backpack and left Paris. A festival in Chile had invited me. I stayed there for three months and extended my musical quest. I began to take an interest in traditional music, particularly by experiencing rituals mixing music and spirituality. I then created the Petites Planètes collection. It never claimed to be an ethnomusicology collection. On the contrary, it is a kind of absolute subjectivity, a slightly gonzo film collection produced all around the world, which mixes genres, classes, formats, and doesn’t give a damn about any hierarchy.”

Petites Planètes’ first film was of Tom Zé. It’s followed by films of his time in Valparaíso (Chile), of zar ceremonies in Cairo… and he has gone on to make whole series of films about music from Ethiopia, Russia, Peru, Vietnam and Brazil, where he lived and documented Afro-Brazilian rituals, among other ceremonies. Along the way, he has filmed DakhaBrakha, Soema Montenegro, Naná Vasconcelos, Ars Nova Napoli, Minyo Crusaders, Lhasa de Sela and so many more. In addition to the 900+ films available on Vimeo (or almost 600 on YouTube, where he tends to upload new videos now) there are also over 250 albums of recordings on Bandcamp from all of his travels.

What’s striking about watching Moon’s films is the homogeneity of aesthetics, whatever the subject. An indie rock band, musicians playing in a street, a crowd of people singing for a hidden ritual… Each sequence introduces an alternative way of listening and looking at the music, whatever the name of the artist. He achieves this through an artistic signature that he brings to each scene: colours, movements, hand-held filming, close-up shots… MESTRE! MESTRE! UM ULTIMO!, a 2011 portrait of Mestre Lourimbau filmed in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, opens with a black screen. A repetitive sound friction and a shadow gradually emerge in the dark. Characters appear in the background, as a scene is outlined through a bright window overlooking a busy street. Little by little the room takes shape and the music emerges. The silhouette in front of the screen, close to the camera, is a musician playing. Slowly, through movement and close-up shots, the scene develops, carried by the music.

Vincent’s films are varied: long, short, one-offs or series, purely musical or including narration. What captivates is the atmosphere. “There’s much more movement than words in my films. I want them to be as open as possible to a fundamental mystery. I like my images to have a poetic power that makes them escape analysis and certainty. I really like the idea of the sequence shot, which for me is an act of illusion, hypnosis, visual trance. It’s a bit like framing the world with shapes, lines and curves, without anything being prepared in advance. I don’t consider myself a director at all. I’m just there watching the moment. In my films, the staging happens in tiny details. I never have big budgets, no synopsis either. In the end, the film that is the result of the scene always escapes me a little bit. For me, that’s exactly where a breath of life, or poetry, comes in.”

When questioned about the styles of music he films around the world, he says: “I don’t use the terms traditional music or world music, I prefer ‘local music’ to designate localised music, anchored in a historical and geographical social space… types of popular music [which] are always played in their environment. This is what I like to film. Today, everyone records everything. If we talk about recording cultures or music on the other side of the world, we first think of an act of saving cultures in danger of disappearing. But in 2024, all over the world, everyone has a smartphone, everyone films themselves doing everything. So, my position is not in the desire to save the cultures that I film… It’s the in between that I am interested in – offering those archives for free to access, and then playing with them to remodel some possible magic.”

Moon makes all of his work available for free, using a Creative Commons license for the films on his website – meaning the work can be shared for non-commercial purposes. “I film every two days when I am travelling. For me, it is like making small portraits. I feel like a travelling photographer who would go from village to village. I like to go and meet people in the four corners of the world in various forms of societies by asking myself this question: ‘How do we live together with music?’ These types of music always tell another story of our humanity: an extremely rich, diverse story. I also try to include the community who participated – musicians, etc – in all stages of decisions. My films are sometimes used as an act of memory, as a work tool… For example, a Western musician will use it as a promotional support, but when I work with a Moroccan wedding group, it endorses another function… most of the time linked to memory, as I always give a copy of my films to the people involved.”

A nomadic artist, Moon works in a spirit of degrowth: “95% of the time today, cinema is made with far too many resources, completely disproportionate compared to the societal collapse that we experience. This way of seeing the world is not mine. I always work alone or with the help of one person who helps me place my microphones. I have a very light sound set-up: a mix of a Zoom mic, a camera mic, a wireless mic, and it all fits in a bag… Also, what I call my live cinema work is essential in my approach today – I organise live screenings of these films, with live music.” These live screenings for Vincent are a way to keep his work, the music, the films and the trance living together while the idea is also to engage with artists on the ground when he’s travelling somewhere: “Each live [performance] allows me to explore a region. For example, I’ll be leaving soon for Estonia where I will film several musicians in a small village festival. And the idea is also to integrate that first work into a live cinema set there during the festival.”

A traveller without ties, Vincent Moon sums up his life with his passion for filming: “My life project is like a film project which is written as I go along the road. I like to think and create a form of nomadic cinema, free, totally improvised. All my films are designed on this model: I travel for a concert or another pretext, and then I take an opportunity to film. I always try to find a balance between preparation in advance (I read a lot of things, listen to a lot of music and take notes) and full spontaneity.”

For the next few months, Moon’s main project will be La Symphonie de Ségriès, an international music residency that he is organising and programming at the Monastery of Ségriès, south of France. A musical retreat in September will bring together 20 musicians to create new forms of music for one week that will be presented in a concert on the final day. Among the line-up are Raül Refree, Hatis Noit and Marc Vilajuana… “After that, I’m going to Central America in November and December to continue my musical research, especially in Mexico where there is so much to explore. I will also produce a live cinema on this occasion. In January I will be in India for the Maha Kumbh Mela, in Prayagraj. I also have recording projects planned there.” For Vincent, ‘L’Homme aux Semelles de Vent’ (the man with soles of wind), to borrow the nickname of the poet Rimbaud, travelling and filming never ends.

Listen to five recordings from Vincent Moon’s Petites Planètes collection on our compilation, tracks 11-15 with the October issue; for more films and recordings visit vincentmoon.com

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue, read the magazine online – subscribe today: magsubscriptions.com