Remember the name of Iggy London as the filmmaker, writer and poet is earning quite the reputation in the United Kingdom and abroad.
He has received critical acclaim for his latest short film, Area Boy, which won the Best Scripted Short award at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
As a creator in many different mediums, inspiration can come from almost anywhere for Iggy, as he explained in a recent interview with MovieMeter. One of his major inspirations came from the music video for Paulo Nutini's Iron Sky, which depicts a population striving to overcome a dictatorial noise that controls their lives.
According to Nutini himself, it was a metaphor for how people are allowing machines to take over their lives and jobs. It includes the following speech from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator:
"To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men! Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Let us use that power. Let us all unite!’"
London previously stated that a visit to the cinema, when he was younger, was out of reach, which means he leant heavily on movie trailers for his film fix.
"I just never went to the cinema when I was young. I feel like my family thought the cinema was, like, dangerous (laughs)," the filmmaker told MovieMeter.
"So, I couldn't ever see films, so I would watch the trailers for them. I watched Stuart Little, 101 Dalmations, Mulan. I watched them non-stop. Because of that, I felt any animation was my, like, was the thing for me. Some of the best trailers are animation. Mulan. Stuart Little has to be one of the best - it was very formative in my life! This surrealism meets realism, it was actually really profound. It's funny because, it's just Stuart Little, but for me it was really seminal. Music videos, I love music videos that inspire film and TV.
When asked by MovieMeter what the best music video of all time is, London mentioned the aforementioned Iron Sky.
"Paulo Nutini, Iron Sky, is my favourite music video ever," he replied.
"It inspired me to make films. It's one of the best, it arrests me every time I watch it. It has some of the best imagery. I love when music videos are able to tap into a social desire, a social connectivity. It talks about people who desperately want to connect but they can't because they are dealing with their own vices."
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