The Source: Philippe André

Independent Films director Philippe André, has helmed spots for top brands from Orange to Guinness and stormed festivals in 2013 with his very French short Delicate Gravity. He is transported by Glenn Gould playing Bach, needs a 40-hour day and finds TV’s anti-heroes heroic 

What is the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen in the last few months?

I Love the Honda online spot The Other Side; it is a great idea to have two versions playing on two digital channels at the same time. Also, IKEA Beds, Lynx Soulmates and First Direct Little Frill. Leica 100 is so beautiful. The New Zealand Transport Agency’s Mistakes is stunning. 

What’s your favourite website?

I love lensculture.com; it’s a great resource for photographers, artists, publishers and curators who want to find out about contemporary photography. Medium.com is great, too, it’s where people share stories. It’s simple and collaborative.

What website do you use most regularly?

Le Monde online for the news then during the day Google and WeTransfer and I listen to Spotify. 

What product could you not live without?

In any order: my laptop, phone and a coffee machine.

What product hasn’t been invented yet that would make your life/job better?

Is it a pill, an implant or a plug-in? I don’t know. Something to enable me to fit 40 hours in one day. Would be good to work, to find time to relax and to think, to see my family, my friends, to go to the movies, theatre or opera more often, to fit everything into one day. The other option, of course, is to live a lot longer.

What track/artist would you listen to for inspiration?

Glenn Gould playing Bach, because it’s perfection. He recorded the same pieces again and again throughout his life.

When NASA sent Voyager into space in 1977, they made The Golden Record with music and sounds from Earth, to show what are the treasures of humanity in case extra terrestrials would find it. Glenn Gould playing Bach is on it.

What’s the best film you’ve seen over the last year?

Mommy directed by Xavier Dolan is a wonderful film. It won a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year and is a superb love story about a widowed woman overwhelmed by the difficulty of raising her violent son as a single parent. It was shot in 1.1 ratio, a square framing, to enhance the characters’ feeling of oppression. When there is a bit of freedom, the frame becomes 2.35 – wider. Breathtaking.

If you could live in one city, where would it be?

I love Paris but I prefer not to live in just one city. I love London a lot. Maybe New York would be a place I’d love to try and live in. As I travel for shoots I generally always end up in the same 10 or 15 cities around the globe. I love the feeling of discovering a city again and again; it’s as if I know the place but also I don’t know it all. Sometimes I feel like a goldfish in a tank with a 10-second memory. I see the world for the first time every time I go round, it’s weird.

What show/exhibition has most inspired you recently?

An amazing show in a former jail,  Sainte-Anne Prison in Avignon, France. The prison was built at the end of the 18th century and closed in 2003. The exhibition was called The Disappearance Of The Fireflies, after an essay published in 1975 by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The show explored themes like time, love, solitude and, naturally, imprisonment. And the works were scattered throughout the cells, corridors and courtyards. The installation Girl With Globe by Kiki Smith was particularly striking – the small body of a child frozen in motion, perched on a ledge in a high and narrow cell with a large sphere hanging above her head.

Mac or PC?

When engineers created the first computer, they got it wrong and used the initials for Pretty Crap. Then they created Mac…

What fictitious character do you most relate to?

I love anti-heroes. They are more ordinary and thus heroic. Human, like us. When they are good, they are never pure, but when they are evil, they have noble intentions. They are never black or white. They are why TV shows are so good right now – Jimmy McNulty in The Wire, Walter White in Breaking Bad, Jaime Lannister from Game Of Thrones or Rustin Cohle in True Detective – anti-heroes are everywhere.

What’s your favourite magazine?

Le Film Français, which is a kind of Hollywood Reporter but… smaller…and French. OK, don’t laugh.

Who’s your favourite photographer?

Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Who’s your favourite designer?

Ron Arad [architect and product designer]. I love his radical approach to design. Years ago when I was working for the National Museum of Modern Art in the Centre Pompidou, Paris, I interviewed him. He explained why we had to destroy old and boring furniture around to give space to create new stuff. He had this kind of punk approach and now he builds amazing pieces. And I also love [engineer, designer and architect] Jean Prouvé a lot.

If you could have been in any band, what band would you choose?

The Velvet Underground. It’s so modern. Or King Crimson. Because it’s a bridge to the contemporary music I love. I called a movie I’m developing Starless in homage to King Crimson.