On My Radar: Julio Carlos

What the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen recently?

I’m really into arty things. I love fashion brands’ creativity since they’re always free. Free in terms of what to tell and where to go and they always take ideas to their last consequences. A good example is the 2017 campaign for Diesel, Go with the Flaw, directed by Francois Rousselet. In Go with the Flaw you have outcast characters, all of them lovely and different, doing very bizarre things. They’re part of the heritage that comes straight form the sixties movies by Jean-Luc Godard, they’re the newest Bande à Part. 

Another very recent work that I love is the campaign film for Miu Miu’s new fragance Twist, directed by CANADA; a magnificent advertising movie that shows the inner core of Canada’s style and arty trademark melted with the most beautiful and surreal scenes from Miu Miu’s world, playing again with words, linking the starring actress, Elle Fanning, with her past advertising work for Vogue.

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

I’m a regular user of shots and Source Creative because of my job. But I’m a web page surfer and I’m always looking for references and new stuff in several different websites, my favourites are: Behance, and Pinterest, but at the same time I’m a reader of The Guardian’s movie reviews.  

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

I’m not a tech guy, but I recently reformed my house and I bought a new TV and a great home theatre to watch movies as they deserve.  

What product could you not live without?

To me, grooming counts, so I love to have all sorts of hair waxes and shampoos as well as great fragrances made always by the best: Dior, Tom Ford, Carolina Herrera and so on. My wife always tells me that I can't live without my mobile phone, but I'm not quite sure. What I really believe is we can live with less than we live with nowadays.  

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

Obviously I’ll talk about Roma by Alfonso Cuarón, who’s one of the Mexican directors that I admire the most. I don't think I could say anything about Roma that hasn't been said. Nevertheless, I would say it’s a very personal movie that talks about worldwide problems such as racism and classism from a very unique and artistic perspective. 

Another great Mexican movie that truly touched me was Buy Me a Gun by Julio Hernández Cordón; a dystopian vision of Mexico in a near future, fully controlled by narco lords where the heroine is a little girl. Cordón’s genre-splicing seventh feature is full of hope, despite the creepy and surreal subject. 

And the last one is Everybody Knows, a psychological thriller involving a criminal mystery, written and directed by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi and shot in a little town in the outskirts of Madrid, called Torrelaguna, starring a great cast that includes superb performances by Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, as well as Ricardo Darín and Eduard Fernández. 

What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?

This is a tough one. There are at least a hundred of movies that I think that everybody should have seen, but the most significant for me, in total disorder, are: Love is a Bitch; Last Tango in Paris; Apocalypse Now; Pan’s Labyrinth; Lost Highway; 2001 Space Odyssey; Black Swan; The Man with a Movie Camera; Breathless; The Godfather; Taxi Driver; Sex and Lucia; Metropolis. 

This list is obviously is open to change every year. I’ve recently watched, at the UNAM Film Festival (FICUNAM), Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Chinese director Bi Gan, a film masterpiece based on the play of Eugene O’Neil.

What’s your preferred social media platform and why?

My favourite platform by far is Instagram, but I must confess that I spend too much time on Facebook. 

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

Currently I’m watching Mr. Robot and I’m trapped by its narrative form, its avant-garde way to tell the story, its amazing script full of ups and downs and turns, really clever plot points, and amazing performances. It was influenced at the same time by David Fincher cinema and maybe by another TV show that I love, Breaking Bad, which ten years ago experimented with similar narrative and technical forms.  

What’s your favourite podcast?

I do not have enough time during the day for me to say that I have a favourite podcast, since my podcast time is completely dedicated towards improving my English, my French and listening to International news at the BBC world service. 

What show/exhibition has most inspired you recently?

I’ve spent almost a year without travelling abroad, but fortunately great expositions have come to the city such as the inspiring Yves Klein exposition in MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art) [below] as well as Kandinsky’s master pieces in Bellas Artes Museum both of them full of textures, ideas, and metaphors to think always out of the box. And currently we have the expo of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, also in Bellas Artes, and although their works are very well known, and I saw most of them in the Georges Pompidou in Paris last time four years ago, it’s always important to rethink their work and how they have changed the arts world.  

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

I started to work as a researcher more than 15 years ago, then I was an editor and I worked as an AD a little bit. I believe there have been two substantial changes in the industry. The first of them is the current diversification thanks to digital. The digital world opened a gap between traditional TVCs and the new languages that can be seen in Instagram stories, YouTube or Facebook. 

Due to the fall of record companies and the democratisation of audio visual media, budgets underwent several changes, and many clients still have not realised that producing for digital has the same cost as producing for TV. 

I would love all the clients and agencies to always think in terms of art and seduction.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

I would love all the clients and agencies to always think in terms of art and seduction; advertising must be so seductive and arty that one could even fall in love with their own dishwasher. If you are to sell a product you need to sell a lifestyle, a piece of art, something really meaningful, otherwise there’s no point in doing it.  

Who or what has most influenced your career and why?

Well, although no one in my family is doing what I do, I have all their support and inspiration. I remember my grandfather buying me half of the items in the painting supplies store when I was around nine years old, after I told him that I wanted to be a painter. And it happened the same when I told him that I wanted to be a chemist. 

He encouraged me to read Shakespeare and Molière when I was very young, and that first encounter with dramatic literature was decisive in my life. My mother took me to several acting classes when I was a child. My father plays the guitar and the drums as a hobby, and that has kept me loving  music as well. So, I think all my basic education was surrounded by art.