REEL DE ORO

The Venezuelan director of photography and filmmaker, Emiliano León, studied Literature and Illustration. He worked as a senior creative producer at Sony Pictures Entertainment / AXN. Trying to get away from office life, he decided to study film at ESCAC Barcelona and then trained as a director of photography at the London Film School.

After a couple of years in the Creative department of Fallon Films UK, he ventured to make a documentary about a 1958 bus that traveled from London, UK to Sydney Australia across 22 countries in a year period. From then on, he has participated in projects of different types, including fashion, and above all documentaries. He has collaborated with clients such as Avianca, HBO, Sony Pictures, Cinemax, Coca-Cola, among others. Currently lives in Mexico City.

Q: What is your first memory with a camera?
EL: When I was 16 years old and traveled alone for the first time through Italy. It was a 35mm camera I borrowed. By trying to explore using the lens, several time I got lost which made me turn the unknown into something intimate and familiar. That became my passion, my way of life.

Q: How would you describe your visual style?
EL: I like to elucidate the beauty of a place where we can do little to intervene. I like a stylish documentary, that natural situations feel elegant and evocative, to be able to print on them purpose. At the same time, I enjoy the other end, the aesthetic work on a fashion film or music video where there is no limit to create and where artificial lighting prepares your senses to understand something else.

Q: In which projects have you worked on recently?
EL: I am currently working on a documentary campaign for Coca-Cola around Mexico. I made a similar campaign for Nivea based on the life of Mexican artists. I previously did a mini-series for the Washington Post with Stateless Media, and a campaign for Colgate-Redfuse around Latin America.

Q: Is there a brand you would like to work with?
EL: National Geographic, Patagonia, North Face. Any brand that seeks to tell real stories in an elegant and moving way.

Q: How do you envision the future of advertising?
EL: I think it’s the age of stories, of narrative. The more genuine and truly human a piece feels, the more powerful it will be. We do not want to feel that they’re selling us something, but we are susceptible to fascination. We spend a good part of the day watching people’s “real” life in social networks. As with Chinese fortune cookies, the product as such no longer matters as much as what it makes you be part of. Advertising will be linked to real causes and experiences, in my opinion.

Q: Where is Emiliano León heading to?
EL: Documentary projects of a stylish type linked to a cause. Achieving to make of recondite places and their characters into intimate experiences … and also the opposite, to turn the usual and ordinary into something extraordinary. For me, that’s the magic of cinematography.

Contact:
Emiliano León
Ciudad de México

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