Fashion, film and the universal lack of funding

I’ve always been intrigued by the world of fashion film. I suppose my interest in it stems from being friends with filmmakers. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent listening to endless film geek chatter since the early 2000s from the Wednesday Group: Quark Henares, Ramon De Veyra, Chris Costello, Alexis Tioseco and Joey Fernandez. I’ve always loved film but have always felt incompetent to actually participate in any kind of discussion as I am not a filmmaker, and the only fashion person in our group. I always went to see everything with them and I remember my initial attempt to win points with my filmmaker barkada with “Dude, Yohji Yamamoto did the costume for Dolls!” Finally, a chance to legitimately drop a name they didn’t know in relation to film, while I desperately caught up with the Gus Van Sants and the Todd Solondzes. It didn’t work though — they didn’t really care about Yohji — but I still have a fond memory of Alexis writing me on YM to remind me to see The City Of Lost Children — “That Jean-Paul Gaultier dude did the costumes,” he said.
I had been a massive fan of SHOWstudio, Nick Knight’s website, one of the key  pioneers of fashion film for as long as I remember, not really knowing what “fashion film” was.  I just really loved the site and the fact that we could interact with the fashion greats on it. This was all when I was studying fashion in London and beginning to build my brand. Everything I could do on the site I did, whether it was downloading McQueen patterns to make, coming up with an item for their Bring and Buy auction (which I was too shy to actually send), or trekking to Dover Street Market to make a 60-second pitch for their PSP Amaze Me project in the hopes of winning the opportunity to have tea with one of my life idols, Isabella Blow. I did win that in the end, but just not tea with Izzy unfortunately, but instead for an internship with i-D that I ended up doing five years later — still, an experience I feel really blessed to have had.
In 2008 I was severely addicted to Diane Pernet’s blog and became increasingly aware of fashion films. I went to my first “A Shaded View On Fashion Film” screening that year at Jeu De Paume, and when I had started to frequent Europe for work I always made it a point to try and go to her festivals if I was in Paris. I “directed” my first fashion film the first time she did an open call in collaboration with Talenthouse, a two-minute film starring Sanya Smith called Three Eggs, shot by Everywhere We Shoot on my bathroom counter two days before the deadline, and edited by Jason Tan (who eventually directed my second fashion film). Not surprisingly, it didn’t get chosen for screening at Pompidou.   
Given my fashion film groupie-dom, you can imagine my excitement when the British Council Philippines sent me an e-mail inviting me to host the cocktail launch of Fash/On Film, a three-day workshop to be conducted by Belfast-born filmmaker and curator Kathryn Ferguson and Marie Schuller, head of fashion film at SHOWstudio.com, sponsored by the British Council and Ayala Museum. Not even jet lag could stop me from agreeing to host it — it’s very rare that we have these events in Manila, and from what I know, this was the first fashion film workshop in the Philippines.  
After introductions, Kathryn and Marie both screened a few of their films. Ferguson screened a film she did for Dazed Digital featuring Lady Gaga dressed in various designers such as Fred Butler and Charlie Le Mindu; a beautiful film called Mathair, Irish for mother, which is an exploration of religious and cultural rituals; and a commission for the label Chloe of Horses that was screened at Palais De Tokyo in Paris. Schuller showed La Toile, French for waist, a film she made with her brother that was part of a SHOWstudio project called “The Fashion Body,” which highlighted different body parts. (Incidentally this was one of my favorite SHOWstudio films, obviously as I am a corsetiere, and it came as a surprise that it was Marie’s!) Schuller also showed The Glow and The Gloom, an homage to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’enfer.   
A screening of UK Fashion Films curated by Ferguson followed, showing an eclectic mix of fashion film — from an animated film by Margot Bowman, to the entertaining and kitschy Anna Dello Russo for H&M film, to the now legendary Gareth Pugh/Ruth Hogben “epic” film — proving that there are no rules to fashion film.  The Q&A that followed gave us an even deeper insight into the world of fashion film — that it doesn’t have to be a lookbook or showcase a designer’s every piece (a mistake I have made for both my former films), the difference between a fashion film and an advertisement, and a realization that even in the first world budgets for fashion films are difficult to come across.
It was interesting to see that despite fashion film becoming a more popular form, even established fashion film makers like Ferguson and Schuller had to deal with low- to no-budgets, and were still making things out of the spirit of collaboration and creating a beautiful film, that will hopefully bring in commissioned work to pay the bills. As someone who struggles with this day by day, and who is lucky enough to have such talented long-time collaborators like Everywhere We Shoot to work with, it was comforting to know that we aren’t alone in our struggle to make something amazing out of nothing. It was inspiring to see that it can be done and with great results — it’s just a matter of finding someone equally passionate to do it with you.
Now if I could only get a map to lead me to a direct route to such people.