For his latest film, Catalan-born director Albert Moya collaborated with Greek screenwriter Efthymis Filippou (one of the talents behind The Lobster) to create a surreal and evocative dystopia based on 1980s experimental cinema—a punk baroque set within El Palau de la Musica, a Barcelona theatre of riotous architectural excess.
The film, which revolves around a secret society of young men who live within a confined and majestic palace, sees its protagonists subjected to the increasingly illogical commands of an omnipresent Great Leader. Moya explains: "I wanted to explore issues of abjection and alienation within today's society, highlighting the absurdities at the heart of modern life."
We will be running a poster competition and giveaway on the NOWNESS Instagram from 4 January. The posters were designed by Barcelona-based graphic designer Arnau Pi.
We asked Albert about filming Baton, from its carpet of bananas to the film's punk attitude:
On the music
The soundtrack for the dance choreography scene is by John Talabot’s project Lost Scripts (Young Turks). The rest of music and sounds are parts of different mixes of experimental electronic music from late 60’s and 70’s. I wanted to combine sounds from now with something modern from that time, harder to locate in time. -
On Baton's wardrobe and fashion
Baton is an artistic collaboration with Belgian designer Dries Van Noten. The men’s show collection presented at the Opera Garnier worked as part of the narrative of the film... that collection had a military tone and that worked so well to portray the idea of a bunch of different people wearing uniforms in a chaotic way.
About the architecture and the carpet of bananas
Efthymis wrote the banana carpet as one of those activities the young men would have to go through every time in that mental loop. My favourite part was to put a character (Young Man A - Sean Nicholas Savage) so proud and generally embarrassed in that humiliating situation.We had around 300 bananas. We covered the hall and main access stairs of El Palau de la Musica in plastic - this is a historical protected building and we were so careful about create any kind of damage.
On collaborating with Efthymis Filippou
In Efthymis' scripts he changes the context of certain themes, giving them unexpected and surprisingly surreal context so even if that theme has previously been seen or heard before, it becomes completely new. I feel so identified in this way to work around a story. I shared with Efthymis the idea of a story that could happen somewhere like El Palau de la Music with a group of young men inside that building. He was immediately into it and we start working together.The first draft he sent me after our first conversation was just great. There were no feedback or changes at all.
Baton poster, designed by Arnau Pi