Color your memories
Photos and interview: Benjamin Deberdt
This independent project will be our first Off Size output…
Alone with a couple old cameras, a lot of smartness and some hard work, this former Parisian suburbs resident will have gotten his second very own video done. With a casting far from pedestrian: Rémy Taveira, Alex Richard, Guillaume Dulout, Valentin Bauer, Sean Hanley and Sylvain Tognelli, or a bit for everybody if you will.
On the road for quite some time, now, he hasn’t slowed down since the Nozbone skateshop Rendez-Vous that came out in 2009. And when you’ll read this, he should be seated in an Antiz van, or at the very end of a long night in some big city…
The results of all these efforts at the bottom of the page!
How would you introduce Color Your Memories?
Where do I start? It’s a two years and a half project, consisting of travels and skateboarding, with six other people… Mostly filmed in France, Germany and Spain. With a tad bit of England and the States.
You were telling me Sylvain Tognelli was a bit of a last minute addition. Does that mean you had a very precise idea of what you wanted to achieve, and with whom, from the beginning?
Yes, most of them were a bit preselected. All were coming off from other projects, and we already had some footage ready. Valentin had filmed a little montage for my blog, and it went really well. So, we decided we might as well work on a real part. Same thing for Alex. I had gone a lot to Bordeaux for my previous video, Patchwork, and we had met there. Guillaume, we had filmed for 5Boro, so we did have a few things. Sean… I went to Barcelona, and he was just incredible. We got so much footage that I told him: “let’s do it!”. Rémy joined in a bit later, but he was such a good traveling buddy. As for Sylvain, we had filmed for Blueprint, but they didn’t use too much of it, so every time I would go to Berlin with the others, we kept on filming. We also met in Barcelona and Lyon. Lionel Dominoni was part of the project from the beginning, but vanished… [Laughter] So, Sylvain filled in. [Laughter]
No major changes along the line, then?
I write my ideas in notebooks and when I re-read the first ideas for parts or other things, the video has nothing to do with what I was thinking in the beginning, from the people to the general format! [Laughter] But, it is mostly cool that everybody kept being motivated to move around. That was the idea! My previous video was mostly filmed in Paris and Bordeaux, so this time, we didn’t want to be stuck in Paris.
In the end, what city do you like the most?
I had a big crush on Bordeaux for a while. I almost moved there, but after a while… I guess you don’t want to abuse your time in cities, I think. Not that I’m not keep on going back, like right now. Berlin is quite nice. Barcelona keeps on being amazing, if you are there with the right people. If you don’t go to Paral-lel every day… [Laughter] They just keep on building, and it’s always something skatable! It’s just crazy.
Even with the crisis?
Yeah, even better, they will have started something, then stopped, and you end up with some sort of unfinished plaza, with nobody around… Berlin is cool, in the summer, not just for the skating, in general. For the lifestyle, too…
So, are you still homeless?
At the meantime, yes… Well, homeless, I still have a pied-à-terre at my mom’s. But no real home, where to get back to every day.
You don’t miss it?
I would like to have a place, but can’t really afford it, right now. Let’s see if I can find some semi stable work that would allow to keep on filming on the side. At the same time, it is quite cool, as a lifestyle, so I might push it a bit more… We’ll see! But I would like to have a little place I could call home, sure.
Big city, or something quieter?
In the end, I would really like Paris, because all my friends are here, end of the day. But I’m scared of falling into a routine of “not doing anything, just freeloading”! When I’m at my mom’s, it’s nice that it’s so remote. But it’s not the same dynamic to get things done. France, or somewhere else, I don’t even know. We’ll see tomorrow! [Laughter]
Last days of filming , in Paris, with Valentin Bauer.
More about Ludovic and his Méli-Mélo Mouvement here.
