Filmmaker and model Diane Guais on capturing the essence of childhood
This is A HOT MINUTE WITH, a quick-fire interview series championing all the rising talent catapulting into fashion, art and music’s fickle stratosphere. From pinch-me moments to bad dates and even worse chat-up lines, think of it as an overindulgent conversation – like the ones you have in sticky club toilets at 4.A.M. Except these guests don’t regret the overshare…
From walking for Celine and Miu Miu to filming backstage at Dior and Ann Demeulemeester, Diane Guais is the multi-hyphenate using her childhood video camera to capture the most intimate and childish moments in fashion.
Courtesy of @dianeguais
NAME DIANE GUAIS
AGE N/A
LOCATION Paris and Normandy, France
STAR SIGN Pisces
Audry Hiaoui: How did you first start making films?
Diane Guais: By asking my parents at 12 to have a video camera (the same I still use for lots of my films haha).
AH: Why do you think you chose imagemaking as your main medium, as opposed to others?
DG: It has been imposed by myself from a young age, so I don’t formulate the reason that pushed me to use this medium. But, from very recently, I feel the urge to express things through words. We will see if it leads to something more important (or not, haha).
AH: What are your film influences?
DG: I love Andrei Tarkovsky, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Terrence Malick, Won Kar Wai, Jonas Mekas and lots more...
AH: What draws your practice to be rooted in capturing the ‘essence of childhood’?
DG: Everything important came from childhood, and I can’t recognise myself without it.
AH: Favourite Japanese literature?
DG: Mishima, Tanikazaki, Kawabata, Yōko Ogawa.
AH: What do you do to connect to your soul?
DG: Lately, I write my thoughts and reflections into my notebooks and I feel close to myself in this way.
AH: Favourite quarantine discovery?
DG: The incredible power of time, and what we should do with it.
AH: What do you miss most about the non-pandemic world?
DG: Freedom is the key but try first to free yourself from inside you, and after that you’ll be free into the real world (I say it to myself haha). Also I think I miss the perfumes and smells because of the mask. And the wind on the face. We are cut off from parts of our perceptions.
AH: What was it like growing up in the middle of a forest? What are your fondest memories of this?
DG: It was everything. One of my fondest memories is when I was sitting by myself alone, surrounded by trees and the river at my foot - just daydreaming (and sometimes singing a little haha)!
