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RUNNING FROM RODARTE
Here’s an eerie and visually stunning short film that’s a promo for the design house Rodarte. From Nowness, where you can find other similarly compelling fashion, art and culture-oriented material and produced by the Director’s Bureau, it’s directed by Todd Cole, shot by Shawn Kim, and scored by No Age.
Guinevere van Seenus stars in Aanteni, a high-fashion techno-thriller from CFDA award-winning design sisters Rodarte, shot by their friend and frequent collaborator, the photographer and video artist Todd Cole. Set in the deserted grounds of Paypal founder Elon Musk’s Space X jet lab in Hawthorne, California, the film was inspired by the pioneering spirit of the space race, which, according to Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, “has defined generations of artists in their desire to use new mediums and question the established rules they were taught to follow.” This cinematic collision between rocket science and visual daring is an apt match for Rodarte’s spring 2010 collection—a symphony of flesh-colored crochet knits, fluorescent fibres, leather bandages and distressed plaid. Costumed in a series of these exquisite creations, Van Seenus blurrily emerges from a shimmering seascape before running through the starkly alluring spaces of the Space X facility—a former Boeing airline hanger that has been transformed into what the Mulleavys call “a world defined by color, texture and material.” Van Seenus’ hallucinatory journey, punctuated by glimpses of mysterious experiments and sudden rocket blasts, is chillingly soundtracked by LA noise-merchants No Age.
I’ve embedded it below but you can watch it high quality at the Nowness link. This is one to plug in your speakers and crank the volume. (Hat tip: Susannah Breslin.)
