Lou Loa
FILM AND MUSIC ARE MY LOVE LANGUAGE
Hi, great that you are visiting. My name is Lou. I make films and songs; mostly a combination of the two.
My artist statement:
Film and music have the power to elevate an individual experience of loneliness to a shared experience of loneliness, so all loneliness dissolves.
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My main game is to write and direct fiction films. Also, I write and direct commercials for conscious companies. I have a lot of love for the following topics: motherhood, gender equality, the transition from child to adult, feminism (and thus the still ingrained sexism and misogyny in our society). Sometimes I get asked to produce music or voice-overs for commercials.
I am a feminist and work from a female perspective. My natural habitat is a set full of ambitious, funny geeks that want to make mouth watering moving images together.
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Film and music are always closely intertwined in my work. Either music is the basis for a short film (Gone, Confine a.o.) or a film story is supported by my music (like in my new project about motherhood: The Real Odyssee) or by songs of artists I admire (like in The Story of Yebba)
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I played the violin for twenty years, took violin lesson at the Royal Conservatory, had the great opportunity to go on tour to Scotland, Berlin and Russia with diverse student orchestras. When my shoulder got injured. and a serious violin playing was out of the question, I picked up the guitar and started writing songs.
I started playing open mics, and alternative festivals. It became time to combine my two great passions: film and music. First, I want to tell you more about how I discovered that film is magical.
I fell in love with film when I was six years old and saw the Lion King for the first time. I wasn't happy at school, I was an undiagnosed ADD'er in a school system that wasn't working for me. I daydreamed about having a small tv screen, putting it on my school desk and watching the Lion King all day long. This was before mobile phones existed. I wrote songs about Simba and drew pictures of him in my free time.
Cut to ten years old. My dad bought one of the first digital consumer camera's: a Sony high8. From that moment on, I seized every opportunity to make little fiction films together with my dad and my girlfriends. We didn’t have editing software yet, so we played the music score on a disk man(!) during recording and cut the film while rewinding and recording over failed parts. It were all Mickey Mouse solutions, but it really taught me the basics of film.
Cut to fifteen years old. Once again I was bored at school. Our English teacher instructed us to do research on a particular fairy tale and give an oral presentation about it in a few weeks. My group of friends was assigned the story of Hans and Gretel. Because we we’re all a bunch of shy nerd, we begged our teacher if we could make a movie instead of giving an oral presentation. She agreed and we filmed a modern version of the old fairy tale. From that moment on I realized film and I were a match. Not because that film became such a hit, but because I noticed I took the lead in every aspect of the film and for sure put the most effort in, just because I liked doing it so much. I remember feeling such enthusiasm while making up the story, acting, thinking of the camera angles and editing (probably on Windows moviemaker) late into the night, while the other crew member were vast asleep.
Cut to twenty years old. I was in the second year of my photography studies at the Royal Academy of Arts, and I knew I was in the wrong place. I auditioned for photography because I was to scared to apply for film school. Being a girl without many examples of selfmade women in my family, I didn’t view myself as a director. Girl, was I wrong. Halfway my studies, I couldn’t switch studies anymore, because it would put me in huge student dept, so I decided to focus on film as much as was possible in my curriculum. I started producing short films for broadcast VPRO Dorst. During the economic crisis, I shot a protest film about the big cuts on art institutions made by the government. The protest film ‘Con fine’ was showcased on the website of the VPRO and screened on the makers festival in the Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam.
I graduated with an interactive film. After graduation I shot and directed music video’s, short films and composed music. To fill in the blanks of my film experience I took a lot of acting classes, directed theatre productions and worked as an assistent director. I traveled to Rio, Brazil to shoot the first scenes of a documentary about favela funk and lived in Fuerteventura for a winter, where I shot a short surrealistic fiction movie: The story of Yebba.
Cut to now. I’m writing a personal fiction script about the first year of motherhood. Six songs that I wrote during my first year as a new mom, will be the soundtrack of the film.
Contact me if you want me to direct your commercial/brand movie. My heart pounds faster if I can contribute to another soul's purpose, so I’d love to help you out!
Great to connect with you,
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See you on set!
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LOVE, LOU
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P.s. My favorite films are: La vie d'Adele, Fish Tank and Room. My favorite series are Beef, Sex Education, Girls, When They See Us, New Girl, and The End of the F*cking World. And many, many more.
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