MALEVOLENT MAGAZINE
Interview by Emory Slone with Emilie Flory
Hello, Emilie! Thanks for talking with us here at Malevolent Magazine!
Can you tell us about Icone Label Pictures and what
all the production company offers?
Icone Label Pictures is an artistic collective, a label, we created with
the director of photography Tariel Méliava. We wanted to join forces and offer
our know-how (plus that of other artists with whom we work) to production
companies like Five 2 One who produced the short film Processus 5. ILP allows us to showcase our trademark in a simple,
effective way and follow production work in a flexible manner.
TRAUMA DOLLS tells the
story of Bijou (Patricia Schmid) who enters the destructive world of adulthood
to become a professional dancer, only to be violently rejected. She then meets
her death after a tragic event! What can you share with us about the film and
what may happen when Bijou returns to the world of the living?
Bijou
comes back to the land of the living (we might even say she decides to while
passing away and the neurosurgeon operating on her isn’t able to bring her back
to life) but she’s never the same. She comes back even though it was
impossible. She comes back without a soul. It’s evil that brings her back into
this world: Evil destroyed her so she’s going to be reborn under its wing. We
can say that Bijou turns into the dark part of herself. From now on, she’s as
cold, hard and animal as she was loving, sweet and pure…
And this
time she’s going to succeed in asserting herself. She’s going to become number
one in the very appealing, though superficial, world of fashion… Her style and
her personality are going to immediately establish her as a Top Model and her
ease in eliminating rivals of both sexes is going to help her suddenly find
herself at the top, to start with…
Where did the concept for Trauma Dolls stem for?
I was
run over by a biker a few years ago and came close to dying. Everything changed
after that. I had to rebuild myself. Since then, I’ve lived in a kind of
permanent urgency. There’s still after-effects from the accident. The idea for Trauma Dolls came to me during a
nightmare four years ago. I was finishing up post- production on Processus 5 and Unifrance didn’t want
the movie. I got so angry that I saw myself killing a bunch of people around
me. At the same time, my reaction stunned me, the very thought of it goes
against everything I believe in and the way I try to lead my life. The mere
idea of rejecting my values and giving up my struggle upset me so much that I
had the nightmare that gave me the idea for the movie.
What stage of production is TRAUMA DOLLS in right now?
We’re in
development. We’re looking for partners and financing. I can’t give you any
details just now but things are coming along.
PROCESS 5 is the story
of survival when the world is about to explode. Can you tell us more about your
Sci-Fi short film?
We shot Processus 5 in Panavision with a
Platinum camera and Primo anamorphic lenses using Fuji 250 Daylight film.
Post-production was done at Digimage and sound at Yellow Cab.
Processus 5 follows a group of young people
(two girls and three boys) who want to exist in a world that’s in total decay
where nothing is possible anymore.
A member
of the group is a computer genius they consider their Messiah, because of him
these young people think they’ll be able to subjugate this world that destroyed
their future. The problem is that power struggles within the group lead us to
fear the worst: their mission to “protect the future” is already a failure.
I left
the movie’s ending open; given the relations between these young people, we
easily feel the urgency of their mission and its ultimate failure.
The
movie lasts 10 minutes, but I could have easily made a feature film out of it
because there’s amazing material to be used in the power games going down
within the cyber war’s context. Anyway, I submitted a series concept to Ego
Productions called Mercenary 2.0, a
project stemming from Processus 5.
What can we expect from you and Icone Label Pictures
in the future?
Well, I
hope we’ll be able to offer you a few entertaining, quality movies dealing with
original subjects. I’m mainly interested in genre movies. As it happens, I’m
doing research on a complex subject, but one that’s fascinating for a Sci-Fi
movie screenplay.
English translation
by Cameron Watson.
