With Director File closed, and michelgondry.com inactive, Michel Gondry has taken matters into his own hands by taking over his domain namesake. Coming soon to Gondry’s web portal are DVDs, T-shirts, comic books, and other Gondry-like paraphernalia. (Here’s hoping for a 5-D Rubik’s cube!)

It’s been some nine years since I started this site as a student of Ohio University. It’s been a weird nine years, not just personally, but throughout the Internet, which has changed a lot since 1991, when I first set foot on it.

I’ve enjoyed updating Director File, but I must now focus on my professional life. If you enjoy reading Director File, or have in the past, please consider a charitable donation.

Cheers,
Kevin

Michel Gondry is featured in the latest edition of Wired Magazine. The article goes into the making of Be Kind Rewind, Gondry’s creative process, and what happened during his residency at MIT.

Most importantly, though, for Gondry watchers is the article’s erroneous mention of Master of Space and Time as Gondry’s next film. I have been told that there is currently no plan for this film to begin production, and no script has yet been written.

Olivier “Twist” Gondry has made a new ad for Beringer in Napa Valley. Titled simply “Vineyard,” the ad features stop-motion animation of a paper vineyard, paper grapes and all.

I regret to inform you that Director File is shutting its doors. Not literally — the site will still be live — but there will be no more updates come January. I have a few more things to post before then, but after that, if you’re lookin’ for me, you can find me at Videoville, antville, or some of the other places on the web.

Take a gander at Director File’s picks for the Ten Best Music Videos of 2007.

Ever wanted to know what happened behind the scenes of some of Björk’s classic videos? In 2006 Director File conducted a series of interviews with François Nemetä, who was Michel’s assistant on many of his best videos. Read on: Isobel, Hyperballad, Jòga, Bachelorette.

Premiering this January at the Sundance Film Festival, Downloading Nancy is the debut feature of Swedish director Johan Renck (see his Director File Q&A). Based on a true story, Nancy tells the tale of an unhappy wife (played by Maria Bello) who hires a man she meets over the Internet (Jason Patric) to kill her, but things get complicated when the two unexpectedly form a relationship.

In anticipation of the film, whose trailer is here (NSFW), production designer Lauri Faggioni, who has worked several times with Renck, was kind enough to answer a few questions.

When and how long was production?

We started shooting in January of this year in Regina, Canada. We were there about 2 months. It was unbelievably cold. The day I arrived it was -45 degrees. That was the actual temperature. The warmest it got was around -15. Everything was so cold and white. The landscape was barren and we were in this tiny town. People looked at us like we were giraffes walking in the snow. We were all out of our element. It was such a crazy time when I think about it now. We all went a little insane in our own different ways. But now after being away from it for a while it is one of my fondest memories. We were all living in this tiny white town in this building that was for business men. These little corporate apartments. We all had our own little places and every night we took turns cooking and entertaining each other in our apartments. Then we’d go to some bar and get loaded and walk around the empty town at night in the snow. It was so cold your hair would freeze grey when you walked outside. We all looked how we’d look when we are 80.

Was this a big departure for you, working on such a dark film?

This is not the kind of project I would normally do. I’ve worked with Johan for a couple of years now and have grown quite close to him and his crew. They are some of the best people I know. When he told me about the project he said, “I want you to read the script, but call me right afterwards to talk about it. Don’t talk to anyone else.” He knew this was going to be something different for me. This story isn’t about cotton clouds and velvet ponies. It was hard to get through the script, sometimes I could only read 4 pages at a time and then I’d have to step away. It’s a hard story to hear and knowing it was a true story made it that much harder. When I finished reading it I called the producers and said, no, no way can I do this. Johan called me and we talked about it. He knew it was a hard tale to tell. We talked about Nancy, about who she was and he told me how he wanted to tell her story. I listened to him and I knew what he had in his heart going into this. It was full of compassion for Nancy and the lost.

Then he said, “I want to tell this story in pastels.” Pastels. That was the joke after I signed on. I said, “You had me at pastels.” Something about telling this dark story in pastels hooked me in. I agreed to it and headed to Canada. The whole flight over all I could think was, “Pastels, pastels, pastels.”

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Lauri Faggioni, creator of Golden the Pony Boy (among other things). In the last year she’s been working with director Johan Renck on his debut feature film Downloading Nancy, which I’ll have more about later this week. First up, though: “Boy With a Coin,” Faggioni’s new video for Florida folkie Iron & Wine (aka Sam Beam). In the clip, a group of flamenco dancers strut their stuff in top fashion as Beam plays his soft, sandy tune.

Faggioni, who did choreography for Mad World and a recent Talk Talk campaign, explains..

“When Sam first contacted me about the video he was at first interested in my doing more of an animated video. They sent me the track and when I heard it, all I could think was flamenco. The clapping in the song lends itself so well to that style of dance. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“I liked the idea of the story being told through the students and the teacher and her sorta schooling them in the end. So I sent the idea to Sam and he liked it and we went from there.”

“The next thing was finding the dancers. It’s not as easy as you would think. Very few women can really dance flamenco in the States. We finally found an amazing woman based in San Francisco named Yaelisa; she is the artistic director at Caminos Flamencos. She brought with her students from San Francisco and found more in Los Angeles. We shot it there. The girls were all incredible and I have to say their spirit is very inspiring. All of them were such strong women and so talented. The first rehearsal I cried when I saw them dance. The sound of their feet sorta goes straight through you. They laughed at me and thought I was an idiot, even when they messed up I’d being crying and clapping. All I had to do was point the camera at them and they made the magic.”