Théo Naniot

EB: Théo, to begin with, we’d like you to introduce yourself to the Brazilian audience. Who are you as an artist, and how did you find your way into experimental cinema?

I am Théo Naniot, 27 years old, based in Belgium and creating projects through many medias under the pseudo SFTCRE.
I’ve graduated from the Fine Arts Academy of Liège in 2024 where I did master in Video-Art and Digital Arts.

 

EB: Was there a defining personal, artistic, or philosophical experience that led you to choose the path of cinematic experimentation?

As far as I remember, I think I always been intrigued by visual arts, and furthermore, visual communication. I started drawing intensively since childhood and kept evolving through what I discovered along the years, leaving a medium for another and so on.
I couldn’t pin a point on a specific experience honestly, but I’m pretty sure that the concept of reality and how we modify our relation to it is something impcatful for me, which might be a current topic or question nowadays. We constantly inprint the result of our own expression on our senses.

 

EB: You describe Devotion as an attempt to translate a sensation about human relationships and the movement that drives us to exist. What was that sensation, and what compelled you to turn it into a film?

It’s rather hard to explain, but I think that Devotion arrived at a turning point in my personal life, it follows another project called Obsession which was mainly driven by the idea of the pulsion of death, introspection and that feeling of seeking inside rather that reaching out and connecting to others.
After that project I knew that there would be a follow up since I was slowly trying to socialize, but as I was embracing that sort of pulsion of life, a lot of uncertainties and untrust would appear as well.
I think Devotion is some sort of cathartic result of that feeling. The sensation that at any moments, even the happier, things can turn bad again, while never really knowing in which direction the wind blows.
That being said, the film somehow really helped me for some reason and it’s always nice to see that art, no matter of the shape it takes, can be use as a therapeutic tool for evolving and moving from a movement to another.

EB: The film seems to create a figure that emerges into a chaotic world, strange and threatening simply for being unique. How did you construct this entity? Does it represent something specific, or is it more of a symbolic force?

In this project, I think I was trying to picture the weird balance between pulsion of life and the fear of it, all experienced by the figure.
This project is the continuation of a series of similar ones and that figure is what I’d call a protagonist, it originally represented the body, the flesh, the scum or the corpse that just exist without meaning or purpose. That sort of contingent waste with still a necessity to survive and trust.
I suppose that It’s kinda the closest thing the spectator can identify with.

EB: There is a clear flirtation with horror in Devotion, but outside the conventional codes of the genre. How do you view this tension between horror and the experimental in your work?

If I could do a parallel with music, I’d compare that horror feeling to atonality in genres such as noise or some hard stuff that leave very few to the listener to hang on to. But as atonality sort of private us from the comfort of melodies and harmonies in a way – and from habits society put upon us – it also makes the appearance of it suddenly more striking, more real. Like a vibrant color emerging from a dull background on a painting. I don’t think I was searching for horror but rather a ‘primal’ feeling through that. And also, I feel that it’s the closest to what life really is the while it’s happening.

 

EB: This is a dense and deeply personal piece. What was the greatest technical or emotional challenge you faced during the creation of this film?

I would say the rhythm. I feel, having it right is often the most complicated part on a project that you end up seeing tons and tons of times, it’s like keeping both objectivity and proximity with the edit while time is the most inconsistent feeling when in the process of creation…
Technically I didn’t used much ressources, worked on my old computer and most of it comes from ‘happy’/‘crappy’ accidents while experimenting. I feel I can be grateful that (almost) nothing failed or broke during the making, nor stopped the creation.

EB: How do you deal with the idea of narrative in your films? Is there an intention to break with structure, or does that happen organically throughout the process?

​

There is definitely a want to step away from any typical narrative structures and an urge to create immersion but it all kind of came naturally. I might be wrong but I do feel that nowadays, there’s a change happening in how cinema, and people generally tell stories. I couldn’t say if it has more to do with the impact of social medias consumption, the status we give to those stimulus or even the influence of video games but Devotion’s narrative must have been influenced by that sensation of audio-visual abundance. A few years ago I’ve done some projects around social media and I find it super interesting, because it does not only shape how we consider medias but also how we visualize and remember memories from our life, and therefore how we create narratives.

EB: What does your creative process look like from the initial idea to the finished result? Do you begin with images, emotions, concepts?

I think I’d generally gather pieces of feelings, sensation or direct concepts I think of at anytime, from dreams quite a lot, or even when in certain places… I film, record, write a lot during that part and from that, I might spend months having those fragments stocked written or as images, drawings, poems, sounds… Until I eventually find their place in a conscious purpose. It often just evolve by amalgamation, and I slowly realize what I want to say and start controlling more clearly what I’m playing with once I’m starting to edit. In a sense it’s like vocabulary when learning a new language, it shapes itself.
After that It’s just doing a huge patchwork. Also, and no idea if that’s worth pointing but I don’t use AI, the visuals or sounds I create are at the image of their own process of completion so the process is essential.

EB: Which artists or works, from within or beyond cinema, influence the way you build images and sensations?

So much things, and with personal project like this it’s complicated to keep track on what are those. I remember listening a lot of Ryuichi Sakamoto final album, Eiko Ishibashi… Watching back Angels Egg as listening the soundtrack as well, watching some Melville stuff also (somehow) and I could mention Tarkovsky, Akira or scientific and philosophic concepts but nothing precise really. Sometimes I can identify clearer influences but for the few lasts projects I got a strange relation to inspiration.

EB: How do you approach sound in your films? In Devotion, it seems to carry an almost physical weight.

Sound is a central part, I also make music aside and I am familiar with creating albums or playing live, so, sound is quite a main element to me.
Actually the idea of thinking an album as an experience remains also in audio-visual projects that I do. Here, the sound was also a way to bring a three dimensional feeling where, with visuals, we are often left to work with a very graphical media. To me this project needed to work also without the image. We can’t remember sound the same way we do remember visual information, maybe there is something more brutal or direct in audio.

EB: What is your relationship with time in cinema? Do you manipulate it intuitively, or is there a clear internal logic to the rhythm you choose?

Even though I start intuitively, I end up figuring out what’s the actual rhythm along the way, here I wanted it to feel very musical – and I could’ve mention it it the influences – like a Black midi, or a Slint song, something from Swans or even like Lingua Ignota, something multifaceted but still appearing like a cathartic trance. Some films gave me that feeling, of some sort of deep dive, like just right now, I’m thinking Apocalypse Now or Valhalla Rising, On the Silver Globe or Stalker have that quality among many others. But it might also be just me projecting my experience when first watching them, it’s more than probable.

EB: Finally, what’s next? Are you currently working on any new projects or ideas you’d like to share with us?

For the moment, I just work on my financial stability but I still have many things on the side, playing in a band, collaborations etc.
I also have new ideas for what would be closer to an actual film, mixing different approaches, but it’s also another enterprise, bigger…
There’s also the want to make things that can portray a more useful purpose, I feel it’s a strange time for the cultural sector as it is in general… But I’m convinced that things will emerge out of that curious liminality.