Man From Tomorrow
Jacqueline Caux
2014 - 40 min - HD - Noir & Blanc - France

A few months ago, Jeff Mills asked me to make a film with him. Before anything else, and even though I knew his music for two decades, it was first necessary to have a series of conversations with him in order to better identify the subjects that inspired and motivated him the most, as well as his questions and preoccupations. These conversations were even more important because from the very beginning, we wanted to make a film that would have a certain aesthetic quality, something more than just a portrait in the strictest sense. Consequently, I wanted to be able to imagine images that would be inspired as much by the words as his music. We also agreed to only use images that wouldn’t identify the actual locations – place and time – in which we were in.
The film is a playful and visual journey intended to lead us through the music of Jeff Mills in a different way. The first part of the film is entirely without words; through a combination of music and images, it is left up to viewer’s imagination and personnal projections to create meaning. It was my desire that music would replace words, in this part of the film, so that the viewer could “penetrate” into the sound.
In the second part, I use few voice-over excerpts of conversations I recorded with Jeff. These remarks clearly show his interest in the outcome of mankind, the future and his proccupations with travel in space and time. These are the topics that nourish his imagination when he composes music. These propositions may seem to us now to come from a world of fantasy; however, they will most certainly become realities accessible to mankind, and may be even become necessary for the survival of humanity.
In this film, light is an important factor - just like it is an important element of our world - as are the shadows that dematerialize the characters in the film. These aesthetically unconventional images follow no set of rules and do not impose any specific narrative. Above all, I wanted to give free reign to the viewer’s subjective impressions, and physical sensations, in this film.
Depending on the rushes I showed him after the shooting, Jeff Mills proposed original unpublished music. In the music of Jeff Mills, there are often elements that seem to hold back time, since the same sound-image can reoccur in such a way as to make in possible to distinguish all its facets. The sound’s lively force, along with these moving images in space, produce hypnotic effects on the listener/viewer. In a way, this is a portrait of the action that these sounds have on our perceptions, which the images in this film seek to match, or even reinforce…