John Lewis and Partners Beauty Shoot
Lovely to shoot film and stills for this John Lewis & Partners Festive Beauty shoot with Cain & Abel. The stills were published in Stylist magazine featuring cosmetics by Chanel, Dior, Bobby Brown and By Terry.
New Features
It’s been fantastic to see personal project The Fell Runner find a home on video content platform Booooooom last week - big thanks to the team there for the support.
Also showing the film recently was Kendal Mountain Festival. The organisers managed to find a spot for it in the already packed schedule and it closed the event, screened on the main stage in front of a full house.
Dambe was also re-picked up recently by lovely little video blog MadeGood. The site pride themselves on creating a place to promote creative and original film making and curate a daily selection of their favourite short documentaries. It’s an honour to be featured!
AW19 Campaign Film
A big thank you to Phase Eight for having me back to direct their AW19 campaign film.
For this piece we decided to play with the idea of movement within light and shade, and it really was one of those shoots where everything came together just right on the day to achieve the look.
Booooooom Feature
Big thanks to Booooooom for making Dambe one of their featured films of the week!
Tag Heuer, The Fold London and Google Arts and Culture
It’s been a busy summer so far with lots of great projects to work on and huge variety.
The last couple of months have seen me work with Progress Film, directing content for their biggest campaign project so far, an exciting collaboration with Tag Heuer and four of their superstar sponsored tennis athletes.
It’s also been brilliant to work with new client The Fold. The Fold is a contemporary British label focused on dressing and inspiring the modern, professional woman and together we shot 5 films and a series of smaller social edits featuring 5 trailblazing women in the beauty, art, fashion and broadcasting sector.
Last week saw the completion of a film collaboration with Google Arts and Culture and Lovers whose commission saw me direct a film centred around Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen and his latest work for the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park.
The Deep Listener is an immersive app that allows you to listen to species in the park through AR (augmented reality) in ways which otherwise can’t be heard. On arriving at a location in the Deep Listener a person will move through up to 30 different audio layers to experience their surroundings in unique and previously unheard ways. To find out more check it out here.
“You can listen to the deep earth breathing of a tree, or the roots, and the bark or the wind.”
Nowness Premiere
DAMBE
Blood, sweat and bandages...Step into the boxing ring and uncover Nigeria’s very own fight club
“Nigerian Dambe is a brutal and exhilarating sport. A fight to the knockout with prize money at stake,” say Alex Simpson and Sebastian Barros, the London-based co-directors behind this new project. “This style of Nigerian boxing is fiercely competitive and largely undocumented.”
“Beyond the strikes and intimidating stares there’s a depth to Dambe that you may not have known existed”
The story of Dambe is told through the eyes of 35-year-old Taiwo, a street boxer from Ogun State, Nigeria. Simpson and Barros conducted parts of Taiwo’s interview on top of one of Lagos’s many unfinished tower blocks that provide cinematic sunburnt views across the former capital. Shots reveal the Ogun fighter training in empty stairwells, underneath bypasses and with a make-shift punch bag made from rice. “We wanted to capture the essence of Dambe in a cinematic way,” say the directors. “Witnessing the practice through the eyes and experience of Taiwo felt like the most personal and effective way to do it.”
Dambe is fought in rounds of three, or less if an opponent is knocked out. The fighters are self-taught and surreptitiously learn the rules and techniques of the game by watching other fights. The most fascinating feature of Dambe is the competitor’s primary weapon, a single arm bandaged in cotton and rope—not for their own protection but to deliver devastating blows. What started as a rural sport in Northern Nigeria has become a national phenomenon that is now somewhat funded by the government and has a dedicated channel on YouTube (Dambe Warriors) boasting millions of online views.
“Beyond the strikes and intimidating stares there’s a depth to Dambe that you otherwise may not have known existed,” the London filmmakers comment. “The sport is steeped in tradition and surrounded by theories of supernatural protection and magical amulets.” Dambe fighters may receive money, cattle or jewelry as winnings but Taiwo explains that the real prize is the glory and adoration the competitor receives from the crowd. Simpson and Barros conclude, “When Taiwo spoke of his fights we felt the enthusiasm pour out of him—reliving each fight with intensity and affection in equal measure.”
Personal Work
It’s been great to finally get a couple of new personal film projects underway and shot this June.
The first, a short piece centred around GB paralympian Gaz Choudhry. Gaz, who is a member of the British wheelchair basketball team features both on and off the court, narrating over the inspirational visuals throughout.
The same week a (very!) small crew and I travelled up to a remote area of the Lake District and spent 2 days shooting another inspirational person, this time fell runner Calum Tinnion. Our luck was in as 2 weeks of rain eased off and some soft rays of sunshine poked their way through the clouds helping us to capture some beautiful shots.
Looking forward to sharing them both soon.
Prints in Progress
It was wonderful to work with the team at Phase Eight recently and create a film to celebrate their 40th birthday this year. We chose to focus on the raw elements of the design process whilst introducing three limited edition dresses throughout, designed especially to mark the anniversary.
