Watch Electronic Musician Flavien Berger’s Surrealist Video For “Léviathan”

The Parisian musician recruited artists Meriem Bennani and Mae Elvis for this 15-minute black and white short film.

March 24, 2016

Parisian musician Flavien Berger released his first full album (plus a three-song EP) this past year on French label Pan European. Berger commissioned an accompanying music video for each of the album's songs, and for the album's last and title track, "Léviathan" he recruited New York-based artist Meriem Bennani to direct a short film for the sumptuous, 15-minute long electronic song—"a tricky format," as Bennani put it.

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"Léviathan" follows a lone woman, played by Mae Elvis—a performance artist known for taking on various identities in her work—who dreams of dolphins and dancing cloud women as she wanders around her suburban neighborhood. The black and white short film is a pure surrealist delight; it's best not to divulge the rest so you can enjoy its twists and turns for yourself.

"Flavien’s music follows me always," Bennani wrote to The FADER about working with Berger, a longtime friend. "It is image-based and image generative, extremely cinematic. I thought it would be interesting to invent a short film collaging footage I found, filmed and fabricated, in the same way music is sometimes produced with fragments from different origins. It’s also simply a story about a woman’s day and productive boredom, about fear, fantasy, daydreaming, and water. It was such a gift working with Mae Elvis!"

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"Music is like a monster," Berger added. "We've been living with it, and it's been growing over and over, taking a shape that the human eye cannot see. I feel like an tiny explorer in it. This song talks about time travel, reversing blood flow in my body, drowning in the ocean and finally caressing a part of this gigantic creature. Meriem Bennani and I, we've been working since the very beginning of our art studies, she's my mint doggy morning soulmate."

Watch "Léviathan" above, and check out Berger's album here.

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Watch Electronic Musician Flavien Berger’s Surrealist Video For “Léviathan”