Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

8 March 2025

The many stories and lives of the fisherman’s classic knitwear and Catherine Deneuve in “À nous deux”

Catherine Deneuve in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo

Cast Out with Love is a wonderful, poetic short visual story written by Lauren Williams, and directed by Greg Dennis, revealing the beauty, history and craft hidden in a traditional hand-knitted Cornish Gansey jumper. It is part of what and who local fishermen are, it is part of a community and its identity. It’s not just a simple garment, it’s every generation woven in its tweaks.

Watching it recently rekindled my fascination with style pieces that have their own storied past, that are pieces of menswear history – that’s often the case when fashion is born of utility, and that’s usually when you can put an equal mark between fashion and style. And just like the Gansey (or Guernsey after the island by the same name) jumper, the history of the Aran sweater is just as beautiful and intricate as the rich array of stitch techniques that goes into its hand-knitting.

The garment has been worn by the fishermen of the Aran Islands (its birth place), off the western coast of Ireland, for hundreds of years. Not only has it kept generations of Irish fishermen warm trough their harsh and unforgiving winters, but it is a distinctive item, a work of local art and a reflection of the islanders’ lives and families. Each region and clan developed its own knitting pattern, carefully constructed (and guarded – rather memorised than written down, passed from generation to generation) and which can contain any combination of stitches, none of them incidental. They carried important information and had seafaring connections. The sweater was a badge of belonging to specific fishing communities and could be used to identify a specific member of a crew drowned at sea. The stich designs are inspired by Celtic art, architecture and design, and each stich conveys a unique meaning. The cable stitch is a symbol of the fisherman’s ropes and represents luck and safety at sea; the diamond depicts, some say, the small stonewalled fields of the island or, according to others, the fishing net mesh, and is a wish of success and wealth; the zig zag stitch represents the twisting cliff paths, while the tree of life is one of the original stitches of the fisherman sweater and it symbolises the importance of the clan and unity within. As for the traditional cream hue, it comes from the undyed, 100 percent virgin wool the authentic Aran sweater is made of. Every single design detail represents a story in itself.

Fair Isle, part of the northern Scottish Shetland Islands, came with its own distinctive patterning for knitwear, which is said to have come from Spain, with the seamen stranded after the breakup of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Along with these design influences, particular sheep breeds and natural dyes local to the landscape have also contributed to the distinctive look of Fair Isle knits. They continue to be produced by hand on Fair Isle today.

It’s easy to understand why this storied garment translates well in movies.

In Les Aventuriers, Alain Delon, Lino Ventura and Joanna Shimkus all master the navy nautical sweater while out at sea. They need garments that stand up to the task. The sweater, navy, classic, with a terrific texture, does that. It’s an item so much part of a sailor’s life or of someone who lives by the sea that we also get to see it on the little boy, Laetitia’s cousin, on his shore expeditions. It’s weighty and tight enough to shield the brisk air and sea water, intuiting at a harsh life by the sea, but also keeping him comfortable and free to play and dream of adventures. And maybe these youthful practicality will cast the most light on his own style when he grows up.

Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Dutronc in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo

In Claude Lelouch’s 1979 film À nous deux (Us Two), Simon (Jacques Dutronc) and Françoise (Catherine Deneuve) are both in hiding in the countryside, in Provence. He, the son of a criminal, has himself just broken out of prison. She comes from bourgeoisie but is also wanted by the police, having her own troubled past she is trying to leave behind. Together they will try to make it to the other side of the Atlantic, to Quebec and then New York. The notion of linear time is left behind in exchange of a meandering narration and it is actually the characters’ costumes that inform us on the story timeline. We know, when we see Catherine in her chunky knitted cardigan with buttons atop a turtleneck atop a crew-neck jersey and in her corduroy trousers, all in muted colours, that she is the farthest away she can be from her former bourgeois life. She is in hiding, desperately in want to escape from her past, so her clothes play the part perfectly: they are ambiguous, nothing to attract the attention. The beauty of it all is that she emanates warmth and natural beauty, sans make-up and fancy clothes. We get to see a Deneuve freed from the image and sexuality signaled through clothes and an association with fashion (she wore YSL in Buñuel’s Belle de jour and again in Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid), as we had the joy to see in Le sauvage, from 1975.

The other sweater Carherine wears can hardly be seen in the film. We only get a proper look at it in the photos taken on the movie set, when she is in the boat, as seen in the opening image here. It is modeled on the maritime seafaring standard and the fisherman’s treacherous vocation. Her whole look here is nautical: navy knitted sweater, navy serge trousers, white socks and navy penny loafers. The clothes are all clearly oversize, quite possibly provided by the men on the ship. Every fisherman knows that outerwear is essential, that they are at the mercy of the elements, their lives constantly at stake. Every traveler in hiding knows that waiting is an inconvenience. The call of the sea comes naturally, just as the fisherman’s occupational clothing is purely practical. Françoise’s clothes evoke real people working at maritime jobs, wearing layers of knit sweaters to keep them warm and dry. They most certainly kept Catherine comfortable, too, during the shooting in the freezing cold of Canada. “The best place to live is “a lighthouse or a fisherman’s hut,” Thoreau said almost two centuries ago. Maybe the best place for Françoise to free herself from the past and find herself is at sea.

Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Dutronc in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo

February Newsletter: A Complete Unknown, Lean on Pete, and Headoniste

Left: “Lean on Pete” film poster | Right: © Classiq Journal

“The road out would be treacherous,
and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it
anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold,
a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it
wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was
wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run
by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either.”

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

Left: “Lean on Pete” film poster | Right: © Classiq Journal

Viewing

A Complete Unknown, 2024
James Mangold

Timothée Chalamet’s interpretation of Bob Dylan and his songs is extraordinary, and that is what makes this film so special: it’s not an impersonation, but his own interpretation of the artist. I am not a big fan of biopics, especially the ones that take you through the lives of the main character, from childhood to fame and beyond, but this is different, and, given the fact that it’s about Bob Dylan and still manages to shine beyond that heavy baggage, it’s just proof of a great way to tell this story. What I also liked is that the film focuses on Dylan’s earliest folk music success right until the controversial moment when he started to experiment with electric guitar and rock instruments – “The folk music scene had been like a paradise that I had to leave, like Adam had to leave the garden. It was just too perfect. In a few years’ time a shit storm would be unleashed. Things would begin to burn,” Dylan write about those years in Chronicles Volume One. There is no delving into his past, he is simply thrown into the New York scene and musical scene of the 1960s and the Newport Film Festival, and that keeps this film so intense and fascinating. It truly feels like we are being immersed into those times. For years, Bob Dylan’s albums have been on repeat in our home and in the car, but ever since I watched the film, the soundtrack of this film has been playing repeatedly, too.

Lean on Pete, 2017
Andrew Haigh

I first heard about this film when I interviewed production designer Ryan Warren Smith about The Holdovers. He had worked on Lean on Pete, too, and he spoke so fondly about this experience that it made me very curious. We promised to do another interview together to talk about it, but until then, I have finally had the chance to watch the movie. It’s an incredibly moving film, the relationship a 15-year old boy forms with a horse after he loses what was already little left of his family. It’s not about the usual friendship between a boy and his pet, but Charlie finding in Pete what is missing from his life, someone to talk to and someone to take care of, things he is desperately in need of. He’s trying to cope with whatever comes along and you actually feel that the slow pace of the film is telling us that only the passing of time will guide him through it. And although he feels so lost, there’s a strong sense of place in the film, in the small towns and the great vastness (hence the two film posters I chose for the newsletter, and which I find extremely telling and natural in their simplicity, both images from the film), beautifully shot, and I can not wait to discuss everything about location and production design with Ryan.

The Player, 1992
Robert Altman

Masterly from the master. A smart, hilarious and very much of its time film about the Hollywood of the 1990s. If you were to know in advance what it takes, you’d not want to watch the movies that come out of the movie studios. Who has the courage to make a film about today’s Hollywood?

All the President’s Men, 1976
Alan J. Pakula

Robert Redford was promoting his politically-charged film The Candidate in 1972 when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two investigative reporters from The Washington Post, broke out the Watergate story and president Nixon resigned. But Redford didn’t want All the President’s Men, to be about Watergate or Nixon. “I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?” This is one of the best political thrillers ever made, especially that we know the outcome in advance. And that is because what is indeed fascinating about the story is the journalistic part. “We took all the elements of their work — the typewriters, telephones, pens on paper, and kicked up the sound on all of them. Every scene where the typewriter is used, the noise is kicked into high gear so there’s a real bang. What does it sound like? It sounds like weapon.” This is a film that continues to fascinate me, after repetitive views. It’s the perfect film.

Left: Photo © Headoniste | Right: © Classiq Journal

Reading

After I watched the film A Complete Unknown, I wanted to read again Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, which is largely an evocation of Dylan’s first year in New York City, 1961 (the time of Complete Unknown), with flashbacks to his boyhood in Minnesota, with the chapters in the middle concerning the making of two later albums, switching from one chapter of his life to another in a meandering narrative and yet all wonderfully hanging together. Never divulging too much, not aiming to set the record right or tell the whole story of how things happened. And in spite of that, or maybe because of that, this feels amazingly detailed, because the journey of any artist finding his voice is never simple, never free flowing, never an open book.

On the way: the book I’ve been waiting for for some time, Sophy Roberts’ second book A Training School for Elephants. “I’ve worked for 15 years on conservation stories in Africa. But the cliches bothered me, in the way outsider narratives were soaked in Out of Africa, Hollywood sunsets that seemed to write Africans and their oral histories out of the landscape. So when I came across an 1879 expedition to Congo with four Asian elephants — one of King Leopold II of Belgium’s first incursions into the continent — I could see a journey I could follow, which would give me a through-line not only from the Swahili coast to the Great Lakes, but into the story of Europe’s grab for a continent. By retracing the journey, I hope I could start to understand something more of colonialism’s impact.”

Sophy’s first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia takes us the music, exile and landscape of Siberia. A land generally known for its harshness, terrifying, unimaginable exile stories and primitive life conditions, is shown another face, of poetry, humanity, survival and unique beauty, as Sophy Roberts sets out to track down a piano for a piano player friend of hers, and then to find out how music entered and was cultivated in Siberia throughout its troubled and dark past. This kind of writing and this kind of book could only be possible by the deep understating and deep bond the author, though her repeated trips there and relentless passion and honest interest, had of and formed with this outlandish part of the world and its people, the people’s people. Sophy Roberts is the most outstanding travel writer of today and her passion for a well told story makes you a better listener.

Listening

The soundtrack: A Complete Unknown

The podcast: Desert Island Discs, the decades-long, perpetually inspiring BBC show.

The album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Making

Amy Madigan in Streets of Fire, the most vibrant and original character, whose run-down leather baseball cap is part of her uniform of confrontation, suggesting much more than a banal tomboy, but rather a new attitude, being faithful to herself and nobody else, her clothes becoming something aspirational. Robert Shaw in Jaws – everything about the clothing of his character, the rough-edged, old sea dog Quint, suggests that the last thing on his mind is to impersonate a social creature or to belong. He is as anti-social and anti-conventional as one can be. His clothes (his signature long-billed faded cap, blue collar work shirt and fisherman’s jacket) not only signal isolation, but serve one purpose and one purpose only:to be worn. Actually, such transcending status has Quint’s cap achieved in time, that it has become inspiration for other film characters as well – when I interviewed Justine Seymour about her costumes for the tv series The Mosquito Coast, inspired of course by Paul Theroux’s book, first adapted for the big screen by Peter Weir, she told me that part of her costume creation for Allie’s character (Justin Theroux, the writer’s nephew) was finding him a cap, and that cap was a copy of Quint’s cap.

Long story short, I love to see the many lives this simple, basic accessory can have in a film. Enter Headoniste, the French brand that set out to reinvent the iconic baseball cap as an essential accessory for a diverted classic wardrobe, an authentic brand, made locally.

On an end note

Lately I’ve seen more and more children and teenagers rummaging through record stores, buying discs with their parents or with their pocket and saved-up money. It feels right and it makes me smile. Maybe they have watched Almost Famous. I wish every teenager would watch this Cameron Crowe film. William Miller (Patrick Fugit) is a 15 year old kid. He is smart and earnest, passionate about music and writing and aspiring to be a rock journalist. And he does get the chance to do a profile on an up-coming band for Rolling Stone magazine (after he lies about his age) and is ushered on tour with Stillwater. It’s his coming-of-age experience. His mother (Frances McDormand) is reluctant to let him go; she is a college professor with fierce values and a strong adversity to rock music (William’s sister rebelled against it and left home, leaving him her rock albums), but William promises he won’t miss his tests. He will miss the tests and won’t even get back in time to attend his graduation, but he has lived the experience that will shape his character and future, he sees not just the rock world (the drugs, the sex and the rock ‘n’ roll), but the real world, with disappointments and darkness and cruelties and hope amidst it all. He is lucky because his mom may be strict, but she is his friend, too. His sister, too. William has another friend, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (Phillip Seymour Hoffman – his every role is a gift to us the audience) of Creem magazine. Every kid needs a friend like him, who ignores William’s age, trusts his abilities completely, and pushes him to go for it, “be honest and unmerciful”. He is lucky to be able to do what he likes, but that does not mean that it’s easy. It’s hard work to get a good story, and to get it right, especially as a teenager who is a fan of the music and is trying not to make friends with the band you have to objectively write about. But what I really want to say is that so much about this film is about the music and how music can make you feel, how in every song you can find something that feels as if it relates to you and only to you. Every teenager should watch Almost Famous and keep buying records.

“As far as I knew I didn’t belong to anybody then or now.
I had a wife and children whom I loved more than anything else
in the world. I was trying to provide for them, keep out of trouble,
but the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece,
spokesman, or even conscience of a generation.

That was funny. All I’d ever done was sing songs that were
dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had
very little in common and knew even less about a generation
that I was supposed to be the voice of.”

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

14 February 2025

“For Bird, it was essential that he didn’t have that dress coding at all”: In conversation with costume designer Alex Bovaird

Frank Rogowski as Bird in “Bird”, 2024. BBC Films, BFI, MUBI

It’s been years since I saw Fish Tank and I still think of it as special and raw, this disarming, intimate family chronicle and unsparing yet humorous and non-judgmental look at working-class Britain. American Honey, too, almost a decade after its release, I vividly recall, this road journey that captured the midland-American youth culture with electrifying energy as it follows a mag crew of kids selling magazines door-to-door. A harsh milieu, characters on the margins of society, social commentaries rooted in the power of the characters. They are realistic, yes, but the stories exhibit insight and humanism. Andrea Arnold’s cinema engages our attention in the most natural and honest way.

In her latest feature film, Bird, 12 year old Bailey lives in a town in Kent, England, with her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), and her brother. Just like Katie Jarvis, who played Mia in Fish Tank, and Sasha Lane who played Star in American Honey, Nykya Adams is a newcomer, and she inhabits the role with the naturalness of a girl who is just being herself. Bailey has a broken home, an unreliable father, an absent mother, her world is bleak, and confused and chaotic, fueled by poverty, violence and drugs, and she’s defiant and desperate to seek adventure in her brother’s gang. And yet, there is no easy sentiment in portraying Bailey, or any other character. We see a girl struggling to reconcile everyday realities with her teenage angst and uncertainty and a yearning for being understood. It’s when she finds and embraces kindness and a streak of fantasy – when she encounters a mysterious man, Bird (Frank Rogowski) – that you root for her and our own emotions resonate most powerfully. The small gestures of friendship, of connection between Bailey and a stranger become moments of goodness and kindred-ship when she needs it most. This film, equally bitingly realistic and poetic, feels genuinely alive especially when tenderness is sneaking in, and hope seems to arise from nowhere and there is the promise of tomorrow.

Andrea Arnold believes in cinema and in what only cinema can do, and us viewers believe in her visual stories shaped by people of so many crafts that come together to make this whole happen. Costume designer Alex Bovaird (True Detective, Nope, The White Lotus) has worked with Arnold on both American Honey and Bird and I have recently had the privilege to talk to her about making movies.

In our interview, Alex shares her eye-opening experience on working on American Honey, her first collaboration with Andrea Arnold, why she and Andrea both love getting out in the world and being inspired by real people, why sometimes actors are encouraged to wear what they feel is right for them or why she chose to dress Franz Rogowski ambiguously in Bird – it’s all about holding onto the truth of the story.

Nykya Adams as Bailey and Barry Keoghan as Bug in “Bird”, 2024. BBC Films, BFI, MUBI

First of all, congratulations on your latest feature film, Bird. Can you tell me how did you come to work with director Andrea Arnold on this project?

Thank you! I had worked with Andrea Arnold on her film American Honey and it had been a seminal experience for me as a costume designer and collaborator. Andrea asked me to come to the UK and work on Bird and I was very lucky that the timing worked out.

How did you approach costuming the film? Did you follow the script, were there other sources apart from the script that you drew from when developing the looks? Was the director a big part of the costume process or is it more a conversation about characters and their evolution?

I make boards for the world of the story, for the mood of the piece and for each character. The boards are collages of inspirations and looks that I collect from contemporary photography, paintings, movies and a lot of real life observations. I break down the script to digest all the information contained within the writing and to know what situations the characters are in and what they will need practically. Andrea and I both love getting out in the world and being inspired by real people, so I spent a lot of time all over Kent and Essex, gathering things from markets and shops, as well as noticing and photographing the locals.

You mention movies as one of your inspirations. Were there any particular movies you watched as research for Bird?

I rewatched all of Andrea’s movies, some Mike Leigh, the most recent series of Top Boy. Tom Wood is a contemporary photographer that I was inspired by.

”Dressing Bird ambiguously helped us to stay puzzled
about who he is and what his role is for Bailey.”

Both Bailey and Bird have noticeably androgynous qualities and what they wear are key to that. How did you develop their respective looks?

Nykiya Adams, who plays Bailey, was a schoolgirl cast on the playground by Andrea’s team. She was much more comfortable in tracksuits and basketball shorts than in anything fitted or more typically feminine, so we leaned into that accordingly and it suited Bailey’s rough and tumble life. Bird on the page was mysterious, other worldly and strange – but was also very rooted in a sense of this place, Gravesend, so he couldn’t look too magical. We tried on the skirts in the fitting and it just seemed to click, they gave Franz a way to move that felt ethereal and we kept him in earth tones. Dressing him ambiguously helped us to stay puzzled about who he is and what his role is for Bailey.

Has it ever happened that an actor felt that he/she fully got into their character only when they tried on their costume? I am especially thinking of Barry Keoghan’s heavily tattooed Bug. His tattoos are more defining than any piece of clothing.

I think the tattoos speak very loudly and that was intentional – he announces his place in the world and his history is written all over him. I was involved in the research for these along with the make-up artist and Andrea, and the costume was a little bit on the backseat to the tattoos.

Barry Keoghan in “Bird”, 2024. BBC Films, BFI, MUBI

And where does one start with researching for the creation of a tattoo that is so defining for a character?

I made a board with references on, I looked at British white rappers like Slo Thai and Milkavelli and then visited tattoo shops in South East London like GB TaCoo on Bexley Road in Erith. Bug has been getting tattoos for years, so the idea is that he would have a mix of styles. I handed the research over to the make-up artist who had her own tattoo artist on hand and we hashed it out with Andrea who was the arbiter of making Bug real and not too “hip”.

“It is always a collaboration between the actor, director and I.”

Was there anything in particular you felt you needed to insist on because you felt it was important for shaping up a certain character?

I never insist on a costume if it’s in contention; it is always a collaboration between the actor, director and I – but I will put forward my reasons for the choices I made and make the case if I feel they don’t know why it’s in the fitting room. The shoes that Franz wears are Keens hiking shoes and looked slightly like bird claws and would give him nimbleness as well as being purposefully nondescript. Franz really wanted to understand why he would have chosen them and I maintained that for his character it was essential he didn’t have that dress coding at all.

Frank Rogowski in “Bird”, 2024. BBC Films, BFI, MUBI

And just as important as it is to have a nondescript piece of costume for Bird, having a loud piece of clothing for other characters has its own reasons as well: the bridesmaids’ costumes. Who came up with the idea for them?

That was written in the script – leopard print catsuits. In the end, we made a few versions and the sparkly purple leopard fabric won!

Were you on the set every day? How does it usually work, is it different on every project?

Yes, I am there at costume call, which is just before the actors and supporting artists are getting ready, and I stay most of the day, until nothing new is walking on camera and everything is set up and ready for the next day. Some jobs that are longer or contain big action sequences allow me to leave set more often.

It’s important for Andrea for it to be realistic,
but then to turn up the volume and shine a little.”

A costume designer’s job is to reinforce the story and help the actor form an identity of his/her character. But what exactly goes into the work of a costume designer today? How much ready-made shopping, how much vintage and how much making did the costumes in Bird involve?

On contemporary projects like this, almost all of the clothing is bought. I got it all locally in Kent and Essex and a good deal was second hand or from local outdoor markets. We did some remaking and a good deal of alterations, but it’s all gleaned from the surroundings of Gravesend – if I could pay someone for the clothes they were wearing, I would! It’s important for Andrea for it to be realistic, but then to turn up the volume and shine a little.

Nykya Adams in “Bird”, 2024. BBC Films, BFI, MUBI

This realism is one of the reasons we love Andrea Arnold’s films. Nothing is left to chance in a good movie, which reminds me about what everybody’s wearing in the fringes of films. Background players are so important for the look of a film and for its authenticity. How do you address dressing the extras?

We send out notes in advance, but we are hoping that they will look good as “themselves” and maybe spice them up if the scene calls for it, like the wedding scene or when we went to the seaside. We have racks of clothes and usually give them an outfit if they have to play in it again. Both Andrea and I love our background actors and on Bird they were called “locals”, to help them stay true to who they were.

All these details are paramount for the immersive experience we live when we watch a film in a cinema. Movies are designed to be seen on the larger screen for many reasons. What does the movie theater experience mean to you?

It’s the most immersive way to see a film and the best way to give it the attention it deserves. Even if I am watching a movie at home on a big screen, I am tempted to do something else at the same time! Our brains are getting used to flitting around on different things… At the cinema, you give yourself to the experience, can fully appreciate all the detail, the sound design, the score and all the other elements so carefully considered for your journey.

Alex, at the beginning of the interview you mentioned American Honey, your first collaboration with Andrea Arnold, and a film that captured the midland-American youth culture with electrifying energy. Since it’s been almost a decade since it was released, would you like to share one of the most memorable experiences from working on that film?

Working on American Honey was an unforgettable experience. We lived in the hotels with the cast and travelled the actual road trip route in convoy. It was a real eye opener to the deepest parts of America and its psyche. My most potent memories are of hanging out with the Mag Crew kids and watching them have the experience of being part of a film. Other than Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough, they were all street cast and I loved shepherding them in and out of costume every night as we moved across this wild and crazy country.

Alex, thank you for taking us on this journey with you.

Sasha Lane as Star in “American Honey”, 2016. Maven Pictures, BFI

“I want my work to feel human”: In conversation with designer Juan Miguel Marin

Image courtesy of Juan Miguel Marin

Juan Miguel Marin’s extended remit of graphic design, better known as La Moutique, includes film posters, film titles and opening sequences, album art, book covers and cultural organization branding. Simplicity is what usually lies at the heart of his work and is key to the power of image used for his film poster designs. But it is a simplicity, and sincerity, that denotes the work of someone with a refined understanding of what the film is about and what the filmmaker is trying to say. It is a simplicity that also has a certain ambiguity that challenges the viewer. It makes you think. It’s feelings, just as much as skill, that push Juan Miguel Marin’s perceptions of a film to a visible form always appropriate to both the visual and emotional loads the film carries, always true to the film’s content and to its intent: His poster design for 52”, directed by Javier Andrade, presents us the story of a natural disaster through the prism of childhood, connecting the outer world to the inner world of the story in the most emotional and expressive way. In my interview with the artist for Beneficial Shock! magazine, we talk about his formative years in Ecuador, about navigating the very thin line between art and design, and about how everything started with… music.

Poster design by La Moutique for “El otro Tom”, directed by Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo”

I would like to start by asking you: What is your first drawing memory, Juan Miguel?

Memory must be the most powerful faculty of us humans. It is certainly the one that I gravitate to the most when I need to express myself. But my first memory of drawing is a bit fuzzy. I do appreciate this question though, as I have spent too many days, trying to access that particular memory without much luck. Is it possible that someone told me that I wasn’t good at drawing at some point growing up, and that’s why I’ve blocked some of those early memories connected to art making? Very possible… So my final answer is: No actual memories of drawing (formally), but I do remember family vacations on the coast of Ecuador, and finding a strong connection with making marks in the sand, whether it was with an object like a stick, a coconut, or with my body.

”I find my best and most honest work happening
at the intersection of hand-made, materiality, and playful
experimentation. Embracing accidents, and discovering
unorthodox techniques is where I find a lot of joy.”

That certainly counts as a first drawing memory. What did you prefer as a child, visual or written stories?

I’ve always been more drawn to stories that included some kind of visual component. And to be totally transparent, I still have a hard time sustaining focus with reading, unless it is a subject I am emotionally invested in. I’ve missed my stop on the train many times for that reason.

Process shot and film poster for Javier Andrade’s documentary 52”

Could you define the philosophy or approach of your work?

The short answer would be that I want my work to feel human.

And if I have to elaborate on that, I would say that over the years – and because I have a very personal art practice being nurtured in tandem with the work that I produce and publish under the moniker La Moutique – I’ve learned that my most honest, and perhaps my most celebrated works, have been those projects made by working away from the computer as much as possible. In my world, that means experimenting with elements and materiality that is intrinsically connected to the stories I’m designing for, both in fiction or in documentary.

It is important for me to create long-term relationships with the directors I choose to work with, and, for that, I want to create a level of trust that goes beyond connecting once the film is finished and ready for a “poster or titles”. My ideal project starts with directors sharing versions of their scripts with me –before the film is shot– as this opens a wealth of avenues to explore. Not to mention the possibility for me to make sure that they take their time to properly photograph and capture very specific objects, textures, characters, etc… while they are on set. A lot of directors/productions miss this opportunity.

And, of course, watching the actual films is critical. I am crafting a method in which I do a first pass of the film as if I were an audience member trying to absorb the film and not thinking that I have to work on it. Then, I do a second pass where I take meticulous notes about both obvious and completely obscure aspects of the film. Perhaps my discerning sensibility is what makes my work appealing to some people.

You can read the full interview here.

”It is important for me to create long-term relationships
with the directors I choose to work with, and, for that,
I want to create a level of trust that goes beyond connecting
once the film is finished and ready for a “poster or titles”.

Tribeca Film Festival Identity

”I wasn’t an art kid at all. Growing up in Ecuador,
I was very much into sports. Knowing what I know now about
myself, it was the performative aspect of sports that kept me engaged.”

”My dad ran a small movie rental store. The ‘be kind and rewind’ type. So movies, movie posters and covers were very much part of my environment as a kid.” Image: Juan Miguel and his brother in their father’s movie rental shop.
Photo published with permission.

January Newsletter: Bird, The Tennis Court & Ruthie’s Table 4

Photos: Classiq Journal

“You have to see it to be it.”

Billie Jean King

Viewing

Cast Out with Love, a wonderful, poetic short visual story written by Lauren Williams, and directed by Greg Dennis, revealing the beauty, history and craft hidden in a traditional hand-knitted Cornish Gansey jumper. It is part of what and who local fishermen are, it is part of a community and its identity. It’s not just a simple garment, it’s every generation woven in its tweaks.

Bird, 2024
Andrea Arnold

Navigating the newest film releases, hoping to find something that stands out, has become increasingly challenging in the past few years. And so, very late to the scene, I can finally name a favourite film of last year. Andrea Arnold has a way to tell stories, full of realism and humanism. It’s been years since I saw Fish Tank and I still think of it as special and raw, this unsparing yet humorous and never judgmental look at working-class Britain. American Honey, both road journey and coming-of-age story, captured the midland-American youth culture with electrifying energy. And now Bird, where 12 year old Bailey (newcomer Nykyia Adams in a brilliant performance) lives on the fringes of society in a town in Kent, England, with her father, Barry Keoghan, and her brother. She has a broken home, an unreliable father, an absent mother, her world is bleak, and confused and chaotic, fueled by poverty, violence and drugs, and she’s defiant and desperate to seek adventure in her brother’s gang. And yet, there is no contempt in portraying Bailey or any other character, and there is no denying in the love of her father for her, but you root for her to find the kindness and understanding she needs the most. And it’s kindness, and a streak of fantasy, she finds and embraces when she encounters a mysterious man, Bird. This film, so bitingly realistic, feels so alive especially when tenderness is sneaking in, and hope seems to arise from nowhere and there is the promise of tomorrow.

The Circus, 1928, City Lights, 1931
Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin’s silent films will never age. There is such fluidity in the narrative, so much is said with so little, they make you laugh hard, and show you a hint of darkness in the human heart… and today they ring truer than ever. They are simply fascinating to watch.

Five on a Treasure Island, 1957

My son is a great fan of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five books and only recently have we discovered the tv series they made after the books. Five on a Treasure Island, adapted after the first book, is fun and timeless, a tale of three brothers and their tomboy cousin and her dog on a wonderful old-fashioned (in the best possible sense) adventure.

Reading

I would find it difficult to read David Lynch’s Room to Dream now, so I am glad I read it when it came out. I can’t forget that the moment I saw the title and cover I fell in love with it. Room to Dream. It’s all in that title. The possibilities that title holds. The mysteries it eventually further deepens. I didn’t expect anything less from David Lynch. Room to Dream does not demystify. What movie lover would want that? A deconstruction of David Lynch’s films? Art does not need explanation, but to be felt and experienced and interpreted by each individual differently. The Lynchian universe remains an enigma. We will always have his films.

The artist who did not compromise, did not sell out, a filmmaker who did not make movies for critics but answered “to the higher authority of his imagination”. There are many random things I took away from the book, the little details and contours and the personal stuff teasing that take you a little closer to the artist and the man, without intruding. You’ve been invited in and you take this chance, a brief splash of insight, because the door will not remain open for long.

His childhood shaped him. He had a sense of humour. He was a happy child and had a happy personality, but was always drawn to dark things. In high school he already had a well defined style and he continued to dress in the same way. Apparently, every woman he met found him attractive. He discovered meditation in 1973 and it changed his life. His films didn’t really make money, but he did what he believed in. He valued his privacy and his favourite thing to do was to be home working. He loved Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment. He thought Grace Kelly and James Stewart’s kiss in Rear Window is one of the best in the history of cinema (the other one is Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift’s in A Place in the Sun). For Laura Dern’s character in Twin Peaks: The Return, he created his own lipstick palette and mixed colours until he found the pink shade that he wanted. He loved Los Angeles light. He worked with actors, not stars. Work always came first. He gave himself room to dream.

Listening

The podcast: Ruthie’s Table 4, centered around food and memories and friendships, with Ruth Rogers, the owner of The River Café in London, which she opened with Rose Gray in 1987, and her amazing guests, from directors and actors to writers and sportsmen. It only takes Ruthie’s masterful art of conversation to fall into the rabbit hole, listening to every single episode every chance you get. But do listen first to the ones with Guillermo Del Toro, Danny Huston and John McEnroe. And then continue with all the others.

The soundtrack: Bird, directed by Andrea Arnold

The album: Morrison Hotel, The Doors

Making

Guida Alpina: a beautiful collaboration between the makers behind Sentier Italia (I love how their story began with an old pair of men’s mountain boots) and Meredith Erickson. A mountain guide in the form of travel, recipes and life stories.

Exploring

I’ve been dreaming about this book and I didn’t even know. Nick Pachelli’s The Tennis Court profiles 200 of the most beautiful, significant, diverse tennis courts from across the globe. A few favourites: Tennis Michelangelo (Florence), Knickerbocker Field Club (Brooklyn, NYC), Libby Park (Ojai, California), Jamor Tennis Training Center (Portugal), Waiheke Tennis Club (New Zealand), TC 1899 Blau-Weiss (Berlin). All of them are beautifully photographed, many of them come with a view, so, yes, that makes this tome a great photography book and the kind of book that takes me on a journey more than a travel book. But it is the stories and people attached to each tennis court that truly champion the game and make us travel the world, deepen the language of tennis, strengthen our obsession with it, vividly articulate the exhilaration this sport provides, and simply make me relive every moment related to the sport, on or off court, and dream on, irremediably in love with tennis. One of the most beautiful photographs in the book is taken in western Uganda: a playing surface dug out in the wet soil near a corn field, with make-do poles and lines drawn with burnt, that resulted in a tennis camp for kids from the local village and surrounding refugee camps. It’s about embracing whatever you have at hand and providing access to tennis for children everywhere.

”In nowadays to me the most successful artists, at least financially,
are not even the best artists anymore, they are just smart, extremely
smart people and they manipulate the system in a brilliant way I must
say. That’s part of what I like about sports ultimately. Because you
really can’t do that in sports. You can talk all you want, but you get
on the court and you gotta step up.”

John McEnroe, Ruthie’s Table 4

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

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