20
Para One, Céline Sciamma’s favourite composer, directs a mysterious first film
After working as a DJ and composing the soundtracks for Céline Sciamma’s films, Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, aka Para One, unveils his very first film as a director: Spectre (Sanity, Madness and The Family), a mysterious, half-fictional, half-real documentary about his own story.
If Para One is now recognized for his work as a DJ as well as his soundtracks for the cinema (mainly for the feature films of the filmmaker Céline Sciamma, of which he is the favourite composer, the forty-two-year-old musician is now embarking on directing, and unveils his first film. Entitled Spectre (Sanity, Madness and The Family), this cinematographic work is described as a documentary, on the border between fiction and reality, which mixes both archival images and sequences shot for the occasion, on a soundtrack also created by Para One. The film tells the story of Jean, the youngest of a large family, who grows up in a community led by Chris, a spiritual guide.
Later, after receiving a mysterious tape from his sister, he reminisces about a multitude of memories and decides to follow in Chris’ footsteps, a quest that will take him to Japan, Indonesia and Bulgaria. In this true-fake documentary, Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, alias Para One, explores his own past, since he himself grew up in the heart of a cult, of which he also reveals some portraits with blurred faces in the film. Alongside this work, presented in the cinema after Dustin, the short film by Naïla Guiguet — a filmmaker-musician, just like Para One — there is also an album and a tour of the same name, all part of a trilogy imagined by the musician.
Spectre (Sanity, Madness and The Family) (2021) by Para One, currently in theaters.
