Fashion film festival ASVOFF to award Kim Jones in this weekend's Paris event

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Oct 9, 2018

ASVOFF, the annual fashion film festival, will stage its 10th edition in Paris this coming weekend, with a new special category of award called Global Champions. The festival will name three creative individuals as Global Champions, a designer, a retailer and an editor; respectively Kim Jones, menswear designer of Dior Homme, Ian Roger of 24/Sevres and journalist Loïc Prigent.

 
These new prizes “[celebrate] the fashion industry leaders and pioneers who have been the most supportive and helped to make fashion film have the most impact in our industry over the years,” explained Diane Pernet, the founder of ASVOFF, which stands for A Shaded View on Fashion Film, in part a pun on her own all-black look, and ever-present Spanish mantilla.
 
ASVOFF first began in Paris’ Jeu de Paume in October 2008, before a seven-year stint in the Pompidou Center and latterly in Bulgaria’s Nuboyana Film Studio. The 2018 edition will be in two three-day stages, October 12-14 in the Club de l’Etoile of Paris, and then September 20-22 in Rome’s Palazzo Altemps, sponsored by Bulgari.

This weekend’s season will feature some 80 films, in a mix of advertising projects, avant garde shorts, freewheeling artistic statements, black comedy, erotic fantasy and multiple hybrid fashion formats.
 
Selected works include Fabien Baron’s Reflections for Bottega Veneta and the Glen Luchford-lensed campaign, Gucci Dans Les Rues. Along with works by Steve McQueen (for Chanel), Ali Mahdavi (Gloria Vanderbilt), and even Four Photographic Sonatas starring Michael Fassbender, shot by Bruce Weber.
 

 
Since its launch in 2008, ASVOFF has been acclaimed for encouraging emerging and established artists to radically alter the way that fashion is presented and for challenging the conventional parameters of film. The festival is peripatetic, having staged events in the Barbican, Art Basel Miami, CaixaForum Barcelona, Franz Mayer Museum and Cannes Film Festival.
 
This year, Spanish actress Rossy de Palma is president of a jury that includes Michèle Lamy, wife and muse of Rick Owens; Jean Paul Gaultier; fashion curator Pamela Golbin; artist ORLAN, and noted French film critic Elisabeth Quin.
 
The weekend will feature a series of films by students of l’École de la Cité and Casa 93, a fashion school for youths from disadvantaged neighborhoods. It is called ASVOFF10 x The Kids of the Banlieue. While evenings include master classes by Lamy; French film producer Patrice Haddad and New York Electroflash star Casey Spooner. Add in projections of three films by John Malkovich, a full-length documentary Uninvited on Marcelo Burlon, the DJ, extrovert and designer of the clubbing label County of Milan; and Michel Haddi’s film A.K.A. about Andy Warhol superstar Velvet.
 
“Ultimately ASVOFF is about rewarding excellence in this increasingly important industry within an industry.  Bestowing prizes on the most moving performances, the most beguiling sound and the most captivating fashion and visuals… Some people say fashion film has finally blossomed now. I say watch out, because we’ve only just planted the seed,” said Pernet.

The film festival is open to the public, though the awards ceremony on Saturday night is by invitation only. It will be staged in the headquarters of ASVOFF’s honorary president Jean-Paul Gaultier.
 
So lights down, and may the projections begin.