Amelia’s Magazine | Gurun Gurun featuring Cuushe: Atarashii hi video – an interview with director Cristina Maldonado

Gurun Gurun kon_b-cover
The Japanese influenced Czech group Gurun Gurun return with a new video featuring Cuushe (read more about the Japanese singer in our 2012 interview here). The EP features a host of remixes by well known Japanese artists and all the money is going to the Tenohasi NPO who help the homeless in Tokyo, and is followed by the album Kon B in May featuring Cuushe, Cokiyu, and Miko. We caught up with director Cristina Maldonado to find out more about this trippy video.

Gurun Gurun ft. Cuushe – Atarashii hi from Home Normal on Vimeo.

I am not a video maker, but a video performer, in most of my work I relate to the video in live time, and the action itself is a big part of the sense of it. I am not interested in the final visual effects, but in the challenge of relating in a very physical way to the projection which is practically immaterial, its interesting to see how the body and ordinary objects can bring a lot of magic into this relationship, therefore I don’t use any digital effects, it is all handmade. Jara’s (from Gurun Gurun) invitation to make a video with this principle was quite challenging because I never tried to present this kind of work without the live part, so I was curious if it would actually work. He sent the lyrics of the song which I immediately liked because they seemed to talk about stuff I experience in my video interventions: ‘In the dark beautiful light I try to put out my hand / Let’s make a new day world of paper’… somehow I took that as a good omen. Then he asked for some scary poltergeist stuff and sent the image of their ghost album cover…

Gurun Gurun video 2
Gurun Gurun video
Cristina Maldonado
I started looking for archive-free-copyright stuff…not much ghosts covered in a bed sheet. Then moved on to the beginning of cinema, some cult films with evil characters and devils but it was definitely too old and too well known, then went into B movies, especially the ones dealing with monsters which were too narrative and too cheap really. This definitely needed something abstract, I concluded I would cut a bunch of dark shadowy scenes of suspense and tension where you actually don’t see anything and put them together, and when I started to select films for that I found the black eyes, and somehow it felt to me it was totally matching the music of Atarashii hi, as they were mysterious, hypnotic, and dark, yet there was a sweet persuasive invitation, unclear to what exactly, but mesmerizing and evil.

Asuna (Jp): 100 Toys, Gurun Gurun (Cz)
Gurun_Gurun_photo_by_Libor-Galia_2
I made two versions, Gurun Gurun chose one and gave me feedback for couple of small editing details, and that was it. It was cool to work with them, I felt that we appreciated similar things, which brings a specific satisfaction. I think in the end the video was a proper match for this single, Cuushe’s voice at times seems to belong to the evil black eyes, at times to the dizzying victim, at times to my own hands, and sometimes she seems just to be narrating the whole thing. It all together is a trippy gentle wicked spell.

Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 3
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 4
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 1
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 2
Gurun Gurun‘s new album Kon B is released on 8th of May, 2015 on Home Normal. Listen to the entire Atarashii hi EP here on band camp. See more work by Cristina Maldonado at www.cristinamaldonado.com

Categories ,Atarashii hi, ,Cokiyu, ,Cristina Maldonado, ,Cuushe, ,Czech, ,director, ,Gurun Gurun, ,Home Normal, ,interview, ,japanese, ,Kon B, ,Miko, ,Tenohasi NPO, ,tokyo, ,video

Similar Posts: