AnOther premieres one of James Lima's dreamy new short films for Prada, a surreal exploration of the subconscious
When film director James Lima first got a call offering him the opportunity to collaborate with Prada on a short film, he was on the set of Spiderman 4. A man whose Hollywood career spans films from Space Jam to Avatar, and whose colleages have included like likes of Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, working with Prada was his first forray into the fashion industry. “My friend called me and told me that he had this incredible opportunity. He said, ‘You can’t tell anybody, but it’s for Prada and it's top secret!'” And, from then on, he was hooked.
Lima’s first film for the brand was Trembled Blossoms: an enigmatic, four-minute exploration into the faery kingdom of the Spring/Summer 2008 Prada collection, and the Art Nouveau James Jean wallpaper of the campaign. He has since collaborated with numerous other labels but, in honour of Prada’s luxurious new Inside Bag, has returned to collaborate with the house to create a series of shorts – one of which, The Swimmer, premieres on AnOthermag.com today. In honour of the launch, we spoke to Lima about what it's like to work within the Prada-verse, Hollywood’s preoccupation with 'sequel-itus' and why the subconscious is so important...
On the stimulation of fashion…
"I love fashion because people in fashion do something genius and then they throw it away. In Hollywood, we’re suffering from sequel-itus: people are just making another version of this and that, and it gets boring after a while. I mean, I love the ongoing saga of the Avengers characters and stuff, but that kind of thing is popcorn entertainment. In fashion, people really get your references; there is a higher level of artistic awareness that is really stimulating and satisfying."
On the Prada-verse...
"An exciting aspect of working with Prada is that there’s this incredible effort almost to not show the product; it's more about immersing you in this strange Prada-verse, of being alive in a certain way. You don't have to add the logo of the end... you don't have to have those narrative structures. That's not your traditional methodology of doing things in terms of commercials and, to me, that's exciting."
On the importance of the subconscious...
"The film was inspired by this sense that within everyone, there are two people: the conscious person, and the unconscious person. Sometimes, we don't know how to have a fulfilling and open relationship with the other person inside ourselves, and so we act out; maybe you keep dating the wrong kind of person perhaps – it's something that is manifested in the 3D world based on an issue that needs to be resolved in the subconscious self. So, within the film, there’s this whole idea of secrets and of mystery and of these two people, these two souls inside you – and it matched perfectly with the whole notion of the bag and the colour themes and the emotionality. The incredible thing about Mrs Prada is that she always gets it right away. She sees the trajectory of the idea, rather than just the idea itself; it's amazing. She's a true inspiration."
Prada's series of Inside Me shorts will be released, one per day, from October 13th to 18th on Prada's social networks and at www.prada.com
