New Directors: Ish Sahotay

If new director Ish Sahotay had his way, the next sushi bar you step into would present you with a buffet of naked girls wrapped in vacuum packs, bondage gear and Gucci-designed sausages, with sides of drug platters, booze, body parts and foot burgers. Luckily, English electropop singer Little Boots wanted the type of music video for her track Taste It that offered Sahotay a platform from which to express his twisted creative vision.

“The concept is presented as a sushi train of decadence,” explains the director. “The conveyer belt motion serves up the things we struggle to say no to, from food to drugs, sex to [plastic] surgery. The art direction pays homage to both 80s fashion photography and contemporary references relevant to the Tumblr generation.”

Sahotay collaborated with his girlfriend, fashion designer Marion Bergin, on the project. She art directed and the pair spent days at her studio researching still life motifs and redesigning them to fit the theme. “We took inspiration from fashion, interior design, architecture and BDSM [bondage/domination/sadism/masochism] porn,” he says.

The director’s path into film came indirectly via the fashion industry. He had founded a clothing label called Lay Lo, which was based on, of all things, Lindsay Lohan’s mug shots. The company’s trademark was to give out gold credit cards and tiny spoons with each T-shirt sold and it was a ploy that ended up winning him his first job. “I went to try and get a position at Pulse Films as a runner and one of the founders, Ian Bonhôte, had a Lay Lo gold card in his wallet,” he explains. “Initially he didn’t believe me when I told him it was my company, but after that we directed a fashion film together.”

In terms of the Little Boots video, it wasn’t just the visual aesthetic that appealed when he approached the treatment a few months ago. The track reminded him of his rap genre of choice – trap music from America’s ‘Dirty South’, so being a big fan he was in from the off.

His description of the resulting piece is one of awkward beauty and enticing imagery spliced together with unnerving scenarios that represent addictions that modern women can succumb to.

Reminiscing about the part of the shoot that saw him packaging up two naked models in an airtight wrapping, he recalls: “When we filmed that, we had our paramedic standing just out of shot with a pair of scissors – to cut them out if it went wrong. It was pretty intense.”

Since shooting the video Sahotay has signed with Biscuit Filmworks’ London office for representation in the UK and Europe and is excited about unleashing his bizarre brand of creativity on more projects soon. “I had never planned to direct,” he concludes. “I wanted to own a clothing brand and continue shooting fashion stills, which is what I’ve been doing for work for the past five years. I enjoyed this project more than I could ever have imagined and have many more messed-up ideas in the pipeline.”