Filmmakers Julia Grigorian and Kirby McClure seem finely attuned to a kind of living magic—the sort that surrounds our everyday but is often overlooked. As they quickstep it over to our meeting spot, there’s a notable spring in their gaits, a lightness that gives the impression they might just as likely hop as walk in my direction (and this at the tail end of several days of nonstop work on their latest video). Together they are Radical Friend. Since graduating from art school, they’ve gained recognition for otherworldly music videos for the bands Black Moth Super Rainbow and Yeasayer. In their interactive video for BMSR’s “Dark Bubbles,” a hooded man in a silver unitard springs on a trampoline to a big-synthesizer sound and airy vocals. The unanticipated delight? Your hand (by moving your mouse, or waving before your webcam) controls the movement of the sun behind him and dictates the time of day. It’s an alluring invitation to the end-user to join in the fun. As Grigorian explains: “It’s less about having a game that you can control and more about touching technology.” McClure adds, “It’s nature, too. Through technology you’re touching nature.” In a world in which nature and technology are more often regarded as foes than as friends, Radical Friend’s outlook—that the twain can meet—offers hope.
In an artistic collaboration that, as McClure puts it, feels “insanely natural,” Radical Friend marries hold-your-breath-beautiful imagery with a narrative approach that feels distinctly primal, closer to myth-making than straight-up storytelling. Though they are technical perfectionists, Grigorian and McClure are less interested in visual trickery than they are in “creating worlds.” Their ambitious, wide-ranging, Jodorowsky-esque video for Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp” demonstrates the pair’s marked talent for doing just that. The film opens on what could easily pass for one of the horsemen of the apocalypse in a gorgeous desert landscape, before cutting to a scene of three men being birthed from a bath of mustard-colored froth. What follows may be the least likely feel-good video ever: a surreal montage of futuristic creation myth set in a postapocalyptic world, all to the beat of Yeasayer’s bolstering chorus of “Stick up for yourself, son.” It’s an unexpected delight.
As to their method and influences, Grigorian explains that inspiration doesn’t strike—it’s all around: “It’s your lifestyle, it’s everything you see every day. I think part of being an artist is being sensitive to the world.” McClure points to the lasting influence of the larger-than-life artists he and Grigorian were steered away from in art school (notably Magritte and Dalí), but he admits that there’s something more basic at work in their films. “Rocks and electricity,” he offers with a laugh. Grigorian and McClure recently completed a new video for Yeasayer’s song “O.N.E.”—an infectious victory tune—which lands us in a futuristic club scene (think Mad Max with crystals and lasers) observed by a late-coming shape-shifter. Drawing from a well of incandescent imagery, Radical Friend’s dynamically choreographed scenes offer entrée into a fantastic world, where rouged onlookers take in a game of chance, a woman’s tears fall into her glass like rain and a chain-link fence assumes a beauty all its own. After experiencing such dreamscapes, you can’t help but want more.

Related Links:
Radical Friend : http://radicalfriend.com/