Saturday, December 15, 2007

Weekend Video - Dance With Me




Nouvelle Vague (the band) was created by two french arrangers, Marc Colins and Oliver Libaux, who put together eight singers - six French, one Brazilian and one New Yorker - to reinterprate 80s post-punk songs in mellow French "lounge" style. Sounds pretty arcane, but the group found their own cult audience and released two albums with a third on the way. Their stand-out production, however, has to be this incredible video of their song "Dance With Me" set to the famous dance scene from Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film "Bande A Part".

As you can see from the clip of the original film (below) - there's
been some deft editing to make it synchronistic, but it's currently my
favorite video.

For trivia fans:

1) The actors dancing are Anna Karina, Sami Frey (in the jacket) and
Claude Brasseur.

2) The film gave its name to Quentin Tarantino's production company, A Band Apart, and several of its scenes are echoed in "Pulp Fiction".

3) Nouvelle Vague and Bossa Nova both translate to "New Wave" in English.

4) In 2005, "Bande A Part" was the only Godard film selected for Time
Magazine's All Time Top 100 Films list.