Rone shares stunning “Nouveau Monde” short film shot in Haiti by director Jérôme Clément-Wilz

“Nouveau Monde” (New World) is a statement of intent from Rone’s new album Room with a View, and the only track on the album where spoken words take the lead. It opens with a discussion led by an astrophysicist-philosopher and a science fiction writer on the need for society to redefine its heroes and mythologies in order to bring about a harmonious and viable future.

What if these new behaviors were to be found in the communion rites of the Haitian carnival? While Jérôme Clément-Wilz, the director of this new official video, has chosen to mute Alain Damasio and Aurélien Barreau, he also seems, in his own way, to present a narrative of this theme where religions, cultures, body movements and facial expressions merge into a feeling of jubilant timelessness.

Words from the director: Jérôme Clément-Wilz  
“What does being together mean today, especially during this time of lockdown? What is being mystic, what is breaking the boundaries between myself and the others? How do we deal with life and death? In this documentary music video, I wanted to depict what communion is about. Not mere regular Christian communion, but rather playful, mad, poetic, syncretic communion.

I visit Haiti at least twice a year to make films, do documentary workshops with the blooming generation or simply meet my friends. When Rone gave me the opportunity to work on this project, the link to the carnival struck me as obvious, especially after seeing “Room with a View,” which also deals with collective trance. I would consider this film almost as a tutorial: why aren’t we doing this in Europe anymore? Why are we trapped in normality? Even electronic music, which used to be a liberation movement, seems to want to lead us into mere collective hypnosis.

This film is a tribute to madly vivid Haitian culture. Every year the people of Jacmel and artists muster their creativity and skill to create the wide gallery of characters dancing during the carnival. Carnival has always been a time when the people reverse social and moral values. Figures of Haitian history: slave, Christian, Native, Voodoo, animist figures blend together into a big catharsis. Haitian carnival as such is also a political gesture and a social critic.

I’m used to filming alone, without a crew, only with my long-time friend Ossange Samba as a driver along the way. I always try to film organically, blending in with the movements of the protagonists. I use cameras, lenses and colors that give the impression of a timeless document. I edit the film in such a way as to create the feeling of a mystical love dance, alternating dreamlike and violent moments.

I did the post-production during lockdown at Le Lac, a collective creative space in Brussels. With my friends there, over the lockdown weeks, we created some kind of artistic bonding, dressing up, putting together wild theater or musical performances. And I would step out of the group into my room ten hours a day to work on “Nouveau Monde.” Working in lockdown was hard: finishing a film is meant to be a time of communion with the artist and the collaborators: we are usually in the same room, polishing together editing, color and sound. I felt a little bit like a telephone switchboard, but we did create a special bound between Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris, Port-au-Prince and Jacmel!