HANGING WITH: PHILIPPE ANDRÉ

"After several years of house-hopping, Philippe André has found a home at Independent in London. We spoke to the French director about the 'family feeling', creative inspiration and his hopes for 2010.

You've moved home quite a bit over the last couple of year. what was it about Independent that gelled with your creative sensibilities?

I joined Independent because I was looking for a company that was solid enough to get the scripts in but at the same time also had a nice family feeling to it. I knew Jani [Guest] and [Richard] Packer and they were looking for a director like me to joint their roster. It was the right timing for all of us.

What commercials projects have worked on recently?

For France, I've been working on an Orange Ad for Publicis and a Citroen C3 wordwide Ad for H. I shot in Istanbul. In London, I shot a Haagen-Dazs film with TBWA in Kiev and at the moment I'm shooting two Santander spots with Lewis Hamilton for WCRS in Cape Town. Lots of planes! Pretty busy and very lucky because I have been involved in great scripts and have collaborated with very nice people recently.

And what are your favourite type of ads to work on?

I'm more and more into story telling and actors. Character and Story, that's the rule. Focus on a great idea. When it's there, everything becomes simpler for some reason; it's just about choosing the right tools to tell better this idea…and because everyone is passionate in the process of making it.

Have there been any commercials this year that have really caught your attention?

Not really, to be honest but perhaps I missed some. Many good things come from a technique, a gimmick, but I don't see so many films that are all about a simple and intelligent idea where you feel: whoa, that's genius. I prefer spots that challenge my brain over ones that flatter my eyes.

The end of this year is approaching fast - what are your hopes and plans for the 2010?

To give more and more room to ideas, to try and push more respect for the audience and act on the belief that they're clever and intelligent. I think we should learn from this economic crisis to be humble. I think people are increasingly fed up with advertising and that's certainly something we have to take in consideration.

I'd also love to find time to make a music video for the most amazing and unexpected piece of music if possible this coming year. Oh, and to start writing a movie in French.

Have you been involved in any creative projects recently outside the commercials realm?

Yes. I've got a script I'm trying to set up in the US as an independent film project. But it takes time and it has not been the right timing for small challenging projects recently. And I'm completing a new script, still in English.

What's been inspiring your creativity of late?

There's been a lot of great stuff. Movie-wise, I loved A Prophet, a new film by Jacques Audiard. It's France's choice for next year's Oscars and is scheduled for release in the United States in February. I don't know when it's released in the UK but just keep an eye out for it. It's such a great film. I loved Michael Haneke's last project, The White Ribbon, too.
Books: I read pretty much everything by Jose Saramago: Genius ideas, always high concept and such an amazing story teller.
Theatre, I've seen this amazing adaptation of Ordet, based on the Carl Theodor Dreyer movie.
Artists: Jordi Colomer.
Photographers: Katy Grannan, Jeff Brouws, Joshua Lutz…
Painters, I loved the exhibition of Pierre Soulage in Paris, 'the painter of black and light' . It's fascinating to see what emotions those giant paintings can create just by using black.


If you had all the equipment in the world and infinite budget, what would be your ideal film project?

I would invest half of this infinite budget into the process of making the movie and would keep the other half for the promotion of this movie.
It's scary how many movies go straight to DVD or just 'meet their audience' because the release is so bad.

To be honest the movie process still amazes me. Why after more than a century, with the web, with video games, with TV, with so many medias we have access too, why do people still queue in the cold, pay a pretty expensive ticket to be badly seated in a smelly room and be in the dark with total strangers for 2 hours. It's totally at the opposite of modernity and our way of living.

I certainly don't think people go to the cinema to see an infinite budget on screen with tons of special effects and explosions. There is something a lot deeper they don't want to tell. Something they try to protect. But when you open this little door, when they are touched, they suffer, they laugh, or they cry, there are millions of people who come to see your movie. And that's the ideal film project. Not to make money (of course that's a part of the process), but more to have been able to tell a story which can connect and touch so many people, from so many different cultures sometimes, be a part of this ritual, to be at the origin of it, that's such a reward.

So this can be a very simple story with a tiny budget. The idea of an infinite budget and all the equipment scares me somehow. Creation is in limitation said Picasso.
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