Filmmaker Focus: Loic Wirth / Intentio
Loïc Wirth first announced his appearance on the scene in 2010, making the cut in Taylor Steele’s Innersection with his section featuring little known Uruguayan surfer Marco Giorgi. 2012 however has been a watershed year for the young Brazilian filmmaker and has seen him release his first feature film and scoop his first major awards. With Intentio the influence of modern masters Kai Neville and Taylor Steele is apparent but Loic takes us on a journey that is very much his own. Travelling through unexpected landscapes and bringing together cutting edge surfing from unexpected characters, and a touch of the surreal he has created something rather wonderful.
We hosted the much anticipated UK Premiere on Intentio to a packed house at this year’s LS/FF so Festival Director Chris Nelson caught up with Director Loic Wirth to find out his story…
I’m from a little island in the south of Brazil called Florianópolis… a magic little place that I feel lucky to be able to call home. And living on an island, it’s hard not to be always on the beach, and being on the beach is hard not to end up surfing and falling in love with it.
I never imagined that I would make films. When I was 19 I went to France to work at a friend’s factory to make some money to be able to travel. It was the first time I travelled, and started to like photography. Life is funny and things conspired so I met Pietro França, a filmmaker that was living in France and he showed me all the possibilities a film camera can give us, and that’s how everything started.
Intentio is my first feature film. It’s an independent film made with a lot of energy from everyone involved. With the help of the surfers and jobs I would do along the way, we traveled to New Zealand, Indonesia, Europe, Brazil, Uruguay, California and Hawaii, and got lucky in all those places with good waves and experiences. It’s hard to pick a favorite session, they all have something special for me, I guess each person will see it differently.
I knew since the beginning that I wanted the film to spread a positive message that would hopefully make us question the world we live in. I had no idea on how I would do it until I finished filming, and got to go through all the footage and write pages with ideas on how to put it together, and am really happy with the result.
The crew, the surfers, it all happened in such a natural way. I’ve met Jean da Silva and Marco Giorgi at the same time and we started filming, then we crossed paths with all the other surfers that believed in this idea and after a year we had all this footage.
For me the sounds we hear are so important. I think is so magic how music and images together can go far on our minds and make us feel other than just listening and watching something. The songs on the movie were songs that traveled with me during the filming and always inspired me a lot. Bands that have a lot of beautiful things to say and messages to pass, that are doing it for love, and I can’t express the feeling of seeing the shots we did with so much love along with songs that have the same essence.
I believe each person will interpret the film in a different way and take what matters to them. If it makes people smile and want to go outside, then I’ll feel like it accomplished something.
Intentio is out now on DVD. Get it HERE
