PEOPLE – a music film by Vincent Moon (DE)

Introduction to PEOPLE festival

In August 2018, 200 artists came together in Berlin for an unforgettable week-long gathering called PEOPLE – a music festival ignited as a collaborative experience of a new kind. The artists, coming from various musical backgrounds – from pop music to traditional ones, from experimental to electronic, moved into the same space and spent a week connecting, collaborating and rehearsing at the historic Funkhaus, before performing what arose out of these days in front of an audience of 5000 people over one weekend. There was no line-up and who the audience would see perform was only revealed when the lights came on. Names, labels, sponsors, artist fees and expectations were removed, and in their place freedom, self responsibility and communal empowerment, the space to create and to rediscover a collective artistic experience.

Artists included Leslie Feist, Damien Rice, Jenny Lewis and Kurt Wagner and members of bands such as Bon Iver, AnnenMayKantereit, Woodkid, The National, Mouse on Mars, Efterklang, Boys Noize, Arcade Fire, Kings of Convenience, Beirut, Poliça and Sigur Rós.

Director Vincent Moon

Vincent Moon is an independent filmmaker and sound explorer originally from Paris. Since 2009 he has been travelling the world making ethnographic-experimental films, recording traditional and sacred music, religious and shamanic rituals under the label
Petites Planètes. His work now explores how we can induce transcendent states using images and sounds, as well as the ritu-
alistic aspects of societies and communities. Moon rose to prominence in the mid 2000s as the main director of La Blogothèque’s Take Away
Shows. The web-based project of recording musicians and bands performing in unexpected locations led to Moon being dubbed ‘the re-inventor of the music video’ by the New York Times.

Throughout his career he has been strongly connected to musicians from all backgrounds and walks of life. He has documented everything from stadium rock music to a capella village songs, from experimentations in electronics to trance rituals. He makes his work accessible to all on the internet, under a Creative Commons licence.