Hidden music rituals around the world

French filmmaker Vincent Moon travels the world with just a backpack, a laptop and a camera. He’s filmed Arcade Fire in an elevator and Bon Iver in an apartment kitchen – and single-shot films of a Sufi ritual in Chechnya and an ayahuasca journey in Peru. In this talk, he explains how film and music can help people see their own cultures in a new way. Followed by a performance by jazz icon Naná Vasconcelos.

Vincent Moon: How can we use computers,

cameras, microphones to represent the world

in an alternative way,

as much as possible?

How, maybe, is it possible to use the Internet

to create a new form of cinema?

And actually, why do we record?

Well, it is with such simple questions in mind

that I started to make films 10 years ago,

first with a friend, Christophe Abric.

He had a website, La Blogothèque,

dedicated to independent music.

We were crazy about music.

We wanted to represent
music in a different way,

to film the music we love,
the musicians we admired,

as much as possible, far
from the music industry

and far from the cliches attached to it.

We started to publish every week

sessions on the Internet.

We are going to see a few extracts now.

From Grizzly Bear in the shower

to Sigur Ros playing in a Parisian cafe.

From Phoenix playing by the Eiffel Tower

to Tom Jones in his
hotel room in New York.

From Arcade Fire in an elevator

in the Olympia

to Beirut going down
a staircase in Brooklyn.

From R.E.M. in a car

to The National around a table at night

in the south of France.

From Bon Iver playing with some friends

in an apartment in Montmartre

to Yeasayer having a long night,

and many, many, many more

unknown or very famous bands.

We published all those films

for free on the Internet,

and we wanted to share

all those films and represent music

in a different way.

We wanted to create
another type of intimacy

using all those new technologies.

At the time, 10 years ago actually,

there was no such project on the Internet,

and I guess that's why the project we
were making, the Take Away Shows,

got quite successful,

reaching millions of viewers.

After a while, I got a bit —

I wanted to go somewhere else.

I felt the need to travel and
to discover some other music,

to explore the world,

going to other corners,

and actually it was also

this idea of nomadic cinema,
sort of, that I had in mind.

How could the use of new technologies
and the road fit together?

How could I edit my films in a bus

crossing the Andes?

So I went on five-year travels

around the globe.

I started at the time in the digital film
and music label collection Petites Planètes,

which was also an homage to
French filmmaker Chris Marker.

We're going to see now a few more extracts

of those new films.

From the tecno brega diva of
northern Brazil, Gaby Amarantos

to a female ensemble in Chechnya.

From experimental electronic music
in Singapore with One Man Nation

to Brazilian icon Tom Zé singing
on his rooftop in São Paolo.

From The Bambir, the great
rock band from Armenia

to some traditional songs

in a restaurant in Tbilisi, Georgia.

From White Shoes, a great retro
pop band from Jakarta, Indonesia

to DakhaBrakha, the revolutionary
band from Kiev, Ukraine.

From Tomi Lebrero

and his bandoneon and his friends
in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

to many other places

and musicians around the world.

My desire was to make it as a trek.

To do all those films,

it would have been impossible

with a big company behind me,

with a structure or anything.

I was traveling alone with a backpack —

computer, camera, microphones in it.

Alone, actually, but
just with local people,

meeting my team, which was absolutely not

professional people, on the spot there,

going from one place to another

and to make cinema as a trek.

I really believed that cinema could be

this very simple thing:

I want to make a film and you're going
to give me a place to stay for the night.

I give you a moment of cinema
and you offer me a capirinha.

Well, or other drinks,

depending on where you are.

In Peru, they drink pisco sour.

Well, when I arrived in Peru, actually,

I had no idea about what I would do there.

And I just had one phone number, actually,

of one person.

Three months later,

after traveling all around the
country, I had recorded 33 films,

only with the help of local people,

only with the help of people

that I was asking all the
time the same question:

What is important to record here today?

By living in such a way,

by working without any structure,

I was able to react to the moment

and to decide, oh, this is
important to make now.

This is important to
record that whole person.

This is important to create this exchange.

When I went to Chechnya,

the first person I met

looked at me and was like,

"What are you doing here?

Are you a journalist? NGO? Politics?

What kind of problems
are you going to study?"

Well, I was there to research

on Sufi rituals in Chechnya, actually —

incredible culture of Sufism in Chechnya,

which is absolutely unknown
outside of the region.

As soon as people understood

that I would give them those films —

I would publish them online for free
under a Creative Commons license,

but I would also really
give them to the people

and I would let them do
what they want with it.

I just want to represent
them in a beautiful light.

I just want to portray them in a way that

their grandchildren are going
to look at their grandfather,

and they're going to be like,

"Whoa, my grandfather is as
cool as Beyoncé." (Laughter)

It's a really important thing.

(Applause)

It's really important,

because that's the way

people are going to look differently at
their own culture, at their own land.

They're going to think about it differently.

It may be a way to maintain
a certain diversity.

Why you will record?

Hmm. There's a really good quote

by American thinker Hakim Bey

which says, "Every recording

is a tombstone of a live performance."

It's a really good
sentence to keep in mind

nowadays in an era saturated by images.

What's the point of that?

Where do we go with it?

I was researching. I was still
keeping this idea in mind:

What's the point?

I was researching on music, trying to pull,

trying to get closer to a certain origin of it.

Where is this all coming from?

I am French. I had no idea about

what I would discover,
which is a very simple thing:

Everything was sacred, at first,

and music was spiritual healing.

How could I use my camera,

my little tool, to get closer

and maybe not only capture the trance

but find an equivalent,
a cine-trance, maybe,

something in complete harmony

with the people?

That is now my new research I'm doing

on spirituality, on new
spirits around the world.

Maybe a few more extracts now.

From the Tana Toraja
funeral ritual in Indonesia

to an Easter ceremony
in the north of Ethiopia.

From jathilan, a popular trance ritual

on the island of Java,

to Umbanda in the north of Brazil.

The Sufi rituals of Chechnya

to a mass in the holiest
church of Armenia.

Some Sufi songs in Harar,

the holy city of Ethiopia,

to an ayahuasca ceremony

deep in the Amazon of
Peru with the Shipibo.

Then to my new project,
the one I'm doing now

here in Brazil, named "Híbridos."

I'm doing it with Priscilla Telmon.

It's research on the new
spiritualities all around the country.

This is my quest, my own little quest
of what I call experimental ethnography,

trying to hybrid all
those different genres,

trying to regain a certain complexity.

Why do we record?

I was still there.

I really believe cinema teaches us to see.

The way we show the world

is going to change the
way we see this world,

and we live in a moment where the mass media

are doing a terrible, terrible job

at representing the world:

violence, extremists,

only spectacular events,

only simplifications of everyday life.

I think we are recording

to regain a certain complexity.

To reinvent life today,

we have to make new forms of images.

And it's very simple.

Muito obrigado.

(Applause)

Bruno Giussani: Vincent, Vincent, Vincent.

Merci. We have to prepare for
the following performance,

and I have a question for you,
and the question is this:

You show up in places like the
ones you just have shown us,

and you are carrying a camera

and I assume that you are welcome

but you are not always absolutely welcome.

You walk into sacred rituals,

private moments in a village, a town,

a group of people.

How do you break the barrier

when you show up with a lens?

VM: I think you break it with your body,

more than with your knowledge.

That's what it taught me to travel,

to trust the memory of the body

more than the memory of the brain.

The respect is stepping forward,

not stepping backward, and I really think that

by engaging your body in the
moment, in the ceremony,

in the places, people welcome you

and understand your energy.

BG: You told me that most of the videos

you have made are
actually one single shot.

You don't do much editing.

I mean, you edited the ones for us

at the beginning of the sessions
because of the length, etc.

Otherwise, you just go in and capture

whatever happens in front of your eyes

without much planning, and so is that the case?

It's correct?

VM: My idea is that I think that

as long as we don't cut, in a way,

as long as we let the viewer watch,

more and more viewers
are going to feel closer,

are going to get closer to the moment,

to that moment and to that place.

I really think of that as a matter
of respecting the viewer,

to not cut all the time from one place to another,

to just let the time go.

BG: Tell me in a few words
about your new project,

"Híbridos," here in Brazil.

Just before coming to
TEDGlobal, you have actually

been traveling around
the country for that.

Tell us a couple of things.

VM: "Híbridos" is —
I really believe Brazil,

far from the cliches, is the greatest
religious country in the world,

the greatest country
in terms of spirituality

and in experimentations in spiritualities.

And it's a big project I'm
doing over this year,

which is researching in very
different regions of Brazil,

in very different forms of cults,

and trying to understand
how people live together

with spirituality nowadays.

BG: The man who is going to
appear onstage momentarily,

and Vincent's going to introduce him,

is one of the subjects of
one of his past videos.

When did you do a video with him?

VM: I guess four years ago,

four years in my first travel.

BG: So it was one of
your first ones in Brazil.

VM: It was amongst the
first ones in Brazil, yeah.

I shot the film in Recife,

in the place where he is from.

BG: So let's introduce him.
Who are we waiting for?

VM: I'll just make it very short.

It's a very great honor for
me to welcome onstage

one of the greatest Brazilian
musicians of all time.

Please welcome Naná Vasconcelos.

BG: Naná Vasconcelos!

(Applause)

(Music)

Naná Vasconcelos: Let's go to the jungle.

(Applause)