"A unique, unexpected, experimental festival. And always surprising".
Flaneur&Publisher presents its surprising catalogue.

After a century of static photography reigning supreme, it’s now time for the moving image to be given the opportunity to capture fashion. Fashion nurtures and inspires on-screen ideals of glamour; actresses spark desire in fans; stars gush over the designers of red-carpet gowns and designers court stars who best embody their vision. Now fashion and film are making their affair more legit and producing offspring that embody the best of both. This year’s ASVOFF roster of short-film directors yields a diverse mix, from well-known talents like Chris Cunningham and Erwin Olaf to fashion photographers who appear to harbor their own silver-screen dreams like Steven Klein and Nick Knight. Chloe Sevigney, Roisin Murphy and Dita von Teese and the luscious Lara Stone in a supernatural film noir by Steven Klein make star turns. This year’s jury features boldface names such as Rick Owens and Nan Goldin.
I commissioned a series of 1-minute fashion films that premiers on May 25-30th at Milano’s Museo della Moda (Palazzo Morando) especially for the ASVOFF Vogue Italia collaboration. Directors were given a one word brief: LIGHT. In addition, Vogue Italia ran an on-line submission call for the series. A selection of the films in the LIGHT series includes: “Sunshowers” directed by Elisa Smith-Leverock in collaboration with jewellery designer Fred Butler, “Short Circuit in the After Hour” directed by Andrea Splisgar. “Untitled” by Sofia Sanchez `& Mauro Mongiello, “Behind the curtain, an intriguing dark ritual is held by a beautiful witch…” “Beauty” directed by Cosimo Terlizzi is an episode of the series “S.N. street without a name, house without a number.” “Blacklight” by Suzie Q & Leo Siboni is a short fashion movie that plays on the codes of fantasy films. A work on the visible and the invisible.
“Earth is Blue” directed by Sophie Delaporte about the surrealist text evoking light inspired by the Paul Eluard poem, “La terre est bleue comme une orange.” Flash, Flesh, Death directed by Mattias Montero is a morse-code signal being sent with blinking light saying “vogue. it”.
In this strange, dark blinking dream world there is a cowboy, a knife woman and the girl by the window. There are no rules in fashion film, no established conventions or constraints, the submissions illuminate Fashion Film’s boundless possibilities.

Diane Pernet

.....................................................................................................................................................................................................

A festival of fashion and cinema.
A Shaded View On Fashion Film.

Great photographers, artists, and designers come to grips with short movies in which fashion is at times their protagonist and, at others, simply their inspiration.
A unique, unexpected, experimental festival. And always surprising.
Not to be missed.

Franca Sozzani
Editor in Chief, Vogue Italia

.....................................................................................................................................................................................................

A Shaded View On Fashion Film

With A Shaded View on Fashion Film, Palazzo Morando makes its entrance on the international scene. It does so by uniting fashion, customs, and the image we have of ourselves through the medium of film.
The seventh art, as a result of the fruitful interaction of fashion and design - just one of the creative highpoints of Milan -by now inspires a whole new cultural genre, one which has no fear of juxtaposing art and glamour in a strange yet seductive inquiry into beauty.
So this artist has rightly made the most of the present festival to present his reinterpretation of the fascinating and mysterious question of fashion’s identity.
This he has done through the languages of video and experimentation which, in the words of Roland Barthes, elegantly «play» with humanity’s most serious: «Who am I»?

Massimiliano Finazzer Flory
Councillor for cultural affairs, Milan City Council

.....................................................................................................................................................................................................

Fashion on the Move

After having been relegated for years to static photography and celebrated in glossy magazines, fashion is now discovering video and the web with increasing interest: two essential tools for communicating in an interactive and global way. After decades of pages of adverts, numerous videos are now being produced which recount fashion through behind-the-scenes activities, interviews, and recent experimental fashion movies. This revolution, which depends on the media of film, is, however, rooted in the 1950s and 1960s and the pioneering experiments of the German photographer Erwin Blumenfeld who, after coming into contact with avant-garde art, had the brilliant idea of using images in
movement for answering the needs of advertising. In the ‘seventies this heritage was exploited by Guy Bourdin and Richard Avedon, and later was employed in the visionary experiments of Nick Knight, founder of SHOWstudio, a creative forge which, since 2000, has developed multimedia video projects and fashion films as a form of avant-garde communications and research. Perhaps the time is now ripe - given the crisis of the past years and the progress of technology and the new media - for the further development of this expressive form.Fashion films have shown themselves to be a way of communicating that is particularly in step with our times, an alternative choice to costly fashion shows.
For this reason fashion designers are collaborating with film directors in order to develop the potential of videos and short films. A small revolution that is recounted here through ten stills stolen from ten videos chosen by Diane Pernet as the representatives of a new contemporary aesthetic.

Federico Poletti