Harley Chamandy Will Not Let Cinema Die

June 24, 2024

There’s an evocative synergy that film shares with music, and Harley Chamandy has been trying to properly encapsulate that feeling for all his life. The 24-year-old Montreal-born filmmaker straddles an innate attachment to both mediums. At 17, he was the youngest invitee of Werner Herzog’s Black Factory Cinema Workshop in Cuba, working under the tutelage of an esteemed pioneer, cutting his teeth with 54 other auteurs-in-training. With a healthy catalog of wistful short films by age 22, Chamandy crafted his debut feature film, Allen Sunshine, across two weeks in southeastern Quebec. Through the musical recordings of its eponymous protagonist, Allen Sunshine is a story of friendship in the wake of loss, using its ambient score as a device for emotional rumination.

By Olivier Lafontant
Photo by Jetro Emilcar

The polarizing values of seclusion and companionship in Allen’s life are accentuated by the nature of his environment: placid woodlands, serpentine pathways, a big, blue body of water. When I connect with Chamandy through Zoom, he’s eager to contextualize the journey behind the biggest piece of his young career, delving into the myriad of unrelated influences threaded into his process. At the core of his desire for artistic fulfillment is an unfettered admiration for Chief Keef, who, like Herzog, turned precocious spontaneity into world class artistry, infinitely imitated. Last year, Allen Sunshine was the recipient of the TRT First Cut+ Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. This July, Chamandy will be in Germany for its world premiere at the Munich International Film Fest.

The way Chamandy describes Allen Sunshine is like a soccer dad raving about his daughter who plays striker for the school team; the sheer level of pride shines through immensely. Across half an hour, Harley Chamandy goes into detail about the subtleties that make up Allen Sunshine, what he’s learned about the film industry so far, and the use of music as a storyteller.

Olivier Lafontant— Allen Sunshine largely centers around the life of an ambient music producer and former record executive. Where did the inspiration for this come from?

Harley Chamandy— It all began with an artist named Ethan Rose who did all the music for my film. He’s an electronic artist who did music for Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (2007) and Showing Up (2022) by Kelly Reichardt. One day when I was in high school I had his album called Ceiling Songs and it made such a strong impression on me that I kept listening to it every day, and it sort of got me into that world of that music. When I was writing this script, I always knew that it had to be that type of music, I just didn’t know that I’d be able to work with my favorite artist, Ethan Rose. I was playing his music the whole time while writing the script and once I finished it, I reached out to him [by] cold email ‘cause that’s my thing and you never know what will happen. He really liked the relationship with Allen to the music and that’s something he really wanted to take on, and he thought that was an interesting challenge for him as an artist. I really think [ambient music] is the most introspective form of art and of music, and I really thought that I had never seen that in film, you know, someone really making art for themselves. In a larger context, I think that electronic music is an artform that’s really for the self and what can happen with the instruments. It’s never really about thinking about the consumer, which I was very interested in.

Yeah, especially with Allen in the movie. There’s the scene where his brother sees his studio and asks him what it’s for, and Allen tells him that it’s only for himself. How do you feel like the music itself informs the narrative of the film? How does it represent Allen as a character?

Well I definitely think that it’s a tool that’s used to display the introspection of the character––how he’s feeling, what he’s thinking about––without having to say anything. Just through the music we can understand his state of mind, and how he’s feeling about things. After the brother comes, the music is way more somber, and then when he hangs out with Bill, the man who comes with the fruits and veggies, there’s something more uplifting and optimistic. I thought it was so interesting to play with the headspace of the character in regards to the music.

Considering this is your debut feature film, what are some of the challenges that came with fleshing out a script across 80 minutes or so?

Literally everything you could imagine. They say don’t work with dogs, don’t work with kids, don’t work with fire, don’t work on the water; I literally chose to do all of it. Plus we shot it on film which was another crazy challenge because we shot in Canada, two hours from the city where we were developing, so we had someone drive the film back every day. I think the biggest challenge really was getting people to believe in a young filmmaker. I made the film at 22 and [had to gain] people’s trust, not just on the financial side of things but also on the creative level. Making a film is very challenging but also very rewarding.

You mention shooting it on film and I noticed that within the narrative itself, a lot of the items and tools used in Allen Sunshine are analog: Allen’s music equipment, his film camera, even the housephones. Why did you feel like it needed to be in a time period that represented that?

That was a huge part of the film. I always had this feeling that I wanted all my films to feel timeless, like there was no way to feel what the time period would be. When I was developing the visual language and shooting on film, we had a production designer, but I was so specific on finding my props on eBay and I feel like every little detail mattered so, so much: the color of the housephone, what kind of camera he was using (a Contax G2 ‘cause I think that’s the nicest looking camera), all the synthesizers––that was one of the biggest challenges of the film because it’s so hard to find this gear. I spoke to a lot of costume designers before doing the film and no one could understand what I was trying to say, so I worked with my girlfriend who has never done costume designing before, but she almost spoke the same language as me in terms of what I was trying to get out.

There’s a real pervasive sense of subtlety that moves the plot along and the majority of the narrative is informed through context clues and vague dialogue. Why do you think it was important for the narrative to be presented that way?

I just think that so much art these days made by young people or for young people is so in-your-face and always very edgy and out there. I think that’s totally cool, but I wanted to have a refreshing sensibility for my generation and I wanted to evoke more of a nuance in terms of the sensitivity of dialogue and how to approach things, and really ask the viewer to slow down. That was a really big thing for me. To be honest it’s something I’ve been chasing for so long, this type of feeling.

Does the overarching theme of grief and mourning derive from personal loss? What drives you to write and direct films of this nature?

I never thought the film was a film about grief, but I really thought it was a film about love and what it means to live without it. That’s always how I wanted to approach it. I know on the surface it’s a film about grief, but to me it’s about finding love in new forms. It’s a film about reawakenings, and finding new outlooks on life, and what happens after loss.

How do the characters you write derive from the characteristics of the people in your life, if at all?

Well if we get really deep into the subconscious, I grew up with a mother who’s a musician. I grew up coming home every day [seeing her] in the studio making music. I never looked at it that way, but I think those are always characters I’ve been inspired by: people that were doing their own thing in their own way. Maybe Allen comes from that. But I’ve also been fascinated by the big mogul kinda characters that also have this really artistic side to them, but we never really see it in the media. I think we haven’t really seen that type of character in a film before: a very rich, successful music industry guy who’s also making ambient, super alternative stuff. I thought that was a really cool juxtaposition. I guess with the kids, I feel like we’ve all grown up with the chubby kid with the long hair. It's almost like everyone kinda knew these people somehow or some way.

What was it like submitting Allen Sunshine to the Karlovy Vary International film festival?

I was part of this lab called First Cut lab which is run by this amazing person, Matthieu Darras. Many of the films go on to play Cannes and Venice and the major film festivals, and I was lucky enough to be a part of it. Then they have First Cut+ lab in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, which is where we meet with mentors and sales agents, and then we pitch our movie to 300 people. There were eight [finalists] and the jury picked what they felt was the best film. Now we’re world premiering at the Munich International Film Festival in July which is super super exciting. But yeah the submission process is very challenging, especially these days where not just so much about how great of a film you make but there’s definitely a lot of politics involved. I think as a first-time filmmaker with not a lot of industry connections, it’s more difficult than I had anticipated, but I’m really grateful for the journey.

Can you describe the process, even outside of Karlovy Vary, of finishing the movie and now promoting it as much as you have even two years down the line since completion?

What I’m really grateful for is that I’m so proud of this film, I really think that it’s everything that I think cinema should be in terms of the sensitivity, the images, the dialogue. I’m really pushing what I wanted to push, which is this optimistic approach. When I announced my film I said that “to choose optimism is to choose happiness,” and I think that’s really the core of what I think the film is about in a sense. Especially as a young person, I really feel like cinema is dying, and [with] the stuff that’s coming out, people get less and less interested. I think what makes great cinema is having young artists with very strong points of view and aesthetic points of view, and not being so worried about storytelling. That’s what I really think is the downfall of cinema is that we’ve always spoken about it as storytelling, but it’s so much more than that. It’s aesthetic, it’s visual, it’s sound, it’s feeling. I think with Allen Sunshine, what I’m the most proud of is I was chasing a feeling and I wasn’t chasing a plot narrative. I was collecting images when I was 17, 18 of old images from thrift shops, and a lot of the references are high fashion and a Canadian painter named Alex Colvill. [There aren't] a lot of cinema references at all. Now to have it out, I feel like it’s a huge part of me that I’ve never been able to show to anyone.

Could you speak more on the high fashion influences? What particularly about certain fashion labels drew you to making a film like this?

I was extremely inspired by Alexander McQueen and Margiela and the way that they [have spoken] about fashion… in a sense I relate more to them than how filmmakers speak about film these days. This aesthetic point of view that they’ve pushed, this nuance––it’s the sensitivity, the details. And the way that these designers speak about things, and their lookbooks and the images… it feels like they’re always pushing things forward. I think that fashion is one of the only artforms that is always being continuously pushed, and there’s so much avant garde but there’s always commercial appeal. There’s something that I’m trying to figure out with film; is there a way to really get to [where fashion is]? Balenciaga is doing some of the craziest shit artistically, but people are still consuming it. Why can’t that work with film? I think that’s what inspired me. Even Demna, I hear him speak and it’s so inspiring to me and that’s where I’m tryna get the film stuff to go. I just watched the [John] Galliano documentary and I feel so much more inspired by these people. I wanna hear about why you chose this type of fabric, and why this photographer? They always speak about inspiration coming from these deep places and I don’t hear that as much in film. [Filmmakers] always wanna explore culturally relevant things and I’m not excited about that.

How do you envision yourself building off of the experiences garnered from the making of this film and its subsequent promotion?

I think that I learned so much about making movies that I never thought about beforehand. It’s not just about having a script and a film and people that are down to make it, but it’s also about what happens after it, the commercial aspect of it, the international interest. I wouldn’t make the film differently at all because I’m honestly so, so proud of it, but I think [from] a business [standpoint] and a larger global context, I would think about things different. Like trying to secure a more famous cast and little things, you know? You gotta have someone attached to it that’s a bit bigger. I’ve networked so much that I’ve been able to meet the head of Sundance, the head of Venice, but I’ve realized it’s a really large game and you gotta play it right, you know? I think when you’re so young and you’re so passionate, you think it’s you against the world and you wanna make these great films. Then you get to a point where you see there’s so many other factors working. It kinda opens your eyes and you’re like “Damn, I gotta think about the art ‘cause that’s what I wanna do, but how can I make the art more global? How can I get it to more people?”

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.