Who better to open the first present than the ever-enthralling AG Rojas, whose unwavering vision and unique talent has broken the boundaries between music videos, shorts and fashion film this year to create a genuinely new and exciting voice. We can’t wait to see what he does next.
AG Rojas: “It always felt like you had to be a director for years and years before you were able to establish a distinct visual and thematic voice. But now, it feels like the young artist’s aesthetic is much more quickly defined.
“As a young person who not only creates, but is a passionate supporter of new talent, I think this is a very good and inspiring thing.
“When 1.4 asked me to choose my three favorite upcoming directors, I didn’t want to go with the usual suspects, but rather hopefully introduce you to three dangerous directors you should really know.”
DANIEL KRAGH-JACOBSEN
A lot of people have seen Daniel’s video for When Saints Go Machine. It even won a UKMVA this year for the low budget Best Indie/Rock Video category. But I think Daniel’s best work so far is his recent video for Rhye’s “The Fall.”
It’s an incredibly mature, full character piece with some really amazing performances and cinematography (by Sophia Olsson). It reminded me of one of my favorite films, Vinterberg’s FESTEN; and it really captures the quiet desperation of this indecisive man in a very sincere manner which is rare, especially in a music video.
https://danielkraghjacobsen.com/
ERIC K YUE
I knew I was going to love Eric’s video for RATKING’s “Wikispeaks” from the first shot. It’s a six-minute-long throwback to classic New York hip hop videos, but with a fiercely modern aesthetic and energy. I feel comfortable calling it the “Brooklyn Zoo” of our generation, and I truly believe that recognition and respect for the video and Eric is forthcoming.
STEPHEN McCOY
I first came across Stephen’s work when he messaged me on Vimeo seven months ago, which led me to immediately devour all his short films.
Here’s what he wrote to me that day:
“I’ve bottled one hipster from Alston who stubbornly tried to tell me that the craft of filmmaking wasn’t a difficult artistic medium to achieve, It was well worth the court fee’s and arrest record. I’ve been making films since i was twelve. I graduated high school and deliberately chose to not go to film school, instead I started living on the streets making films with certain people society would consider outsiders, real genuine characters of life most people would like to pretend don’t exist.
“In the matter of a couple years my idea of what cinema meant to me was completely destroyed and swept clean and for a moment it almost drove me to point of insanity. It was a combination of a lot of things, feelings of discontent for almost everything and everyone of my generation, my own obsession with cinema and it’s current degradation and my own issues with drug addiction. But I have seemed to pull myself back and with that my form has become more extreme, more poetic and poignant, a kind of reborn social terrorist form of filmmaking.”
Enough said.
See all work in Related Content.
