When we first stumbled across Andreas Pasvantis’ film December, we were morbidly intrigued. Then we were slightly alarmed. And then we laughed so hard we hurt our stomach. A little bit of digging, and we uncovered his short Stil – an ode to Amsterdam at nighttime, which couldn’t be more different. But then Andreas is a young filmmaker who isn’t afraid to experiment. We caught up with Andreas.
Jan-Willem de Man and Frenkel Schonfeld came up with the idea of December a year ago. They are two friends of mine who work at an advertising agency in Amsterdam called CCCP. We thought the film could be a fresh and different take on the many many sweet and cheesy feel-good Christmas films out there. A film that offers the viewer a look into the ‘dark side’ of the seasonal celebrations.
To me the film is a really clever twist on the Tarantino camera-in-the-car-boot shot – was that your intention?
I’m a fan of the work of Quentin Tarantino and as much as a compliment the comparison between ‘December’ and the camera-in-the-car-boot is that wasn’t my intention. I did not have a direct scene or film from which I got the inspiration for ‘December’. What interested me during the process of the film was the Point Of View cinematography that usually implies that the main character is a person. There are a lot of POV commercials, music videos and so on nowadays and we thought it would be a nice and different way to tell a story. One about a Christmas tree.
How would you characterise your directing style?
It’s hard to say what my directing style is. I’m a young filmmaker and I don’t have a ‘type’ of film I make. What I can say is that I enjoy making films that are heavily form and visual driven. For each project I like to start from scratch as it were for style and form to see what the best way is to tell that specific story.
A big source of inspiration and who’s work I admire is Johan Kramer. I assisted him with a lot of his projects, commercials, documentaries and recently a super-8 art project that is being show at ‘De Kunsthal’ during the International Film Festival Rotterdam (http://www.kunsthal.nl/en-22-671-ByeBye_Super-8.html).
Other than December, which piece of your work are you proudest of and why?
Other than ‘December’ I am proud of ‘Morgen’ (Tomorrow) – 12min.- That’s my first short that I wrote and directed two years ago. It’s something that although I made with no means within far to short time I still am very proud of. It’s a slow paced film that is almost 180 degrees different than ‘December’.
Outside of filmmaking, what do you enjoy doing?
Outside filmmaking I enjoy photography very much. A discipline that inspires the way I like to make films. Also music is a big part of my life, I played as a DJ for a big part of my college years and I still now and then DJ at clubs in Amsterdam.
During my studies at the New York Film Academy in NYC I developed a big addiction for coffee which I still enjoy daily.
The film ‘Stil’ was a project that I did together with Frenkel Schonfeld. We made it for the Museumnacht (www.n8.nl). It’s a night when all the museums of Amsterdam are open and draw thousands of people. We wanted to make an ode to the night in Amsterdam. So we came up with a famous song by one of the biggest Dutch singers who ever lived, called Ramses Shaffy. He has a famous song that’s about the night in Amsterdam called ‘Stil’, which means quiet.
From that song on we wanted to stage a lot of different scenes in Amsterdam that would reference the song in a different way. We staged everything, all the scenes are played by actors, but we wanted to let the viewer believe all the shots were ‘observed’ as in a documentary way so it would benefit the ‘realness’ of the film.
Here’s a rough translation, so you have an idea how the lyrics interact with the film:
It’s quiet in Amsterda
The cars and bikes are lifeless objects
The city now belongs to just a few individuals
Who like me, love deserted streets
So you can sing out loud
It’s so quiet in Amsterdam
And thank goodness
I didn’t encountered someone
It’s so quiet in Amsterdam
I wish I finally met someone
For more information on Andreas and his work check out his Vimeo page or his website
