Single-use - Richard Joray - INTERVIEW
HFF: Tell us a few words about your short film.
RJ: Summarizing this short film isn’t easy, I think. A lonely man, wandering in the forest, who is always caught up by objects and the consumer society. A never-ending cycle. In a way, it’s the anti - Into the Wild.
HFF: What were your references for this film?
RJ: I was thinking of Luc Moullet’s style—his bitter, satirical films (I don’t like the "Comedy" label) that, in fact, depict people with striking accuracy: their relationships, their place in the world, and the hypocrisy behind appearances, the mechanics of society. I watched Les Naufragés de la D17 couple of days before shooting the short film. Maybe an other reference can be The Long Weekend by Coling Eggleston and some satirical movies from the incredibly talented filmakers from the Czechoslovak New Wave.
HFF: Your film takes place only outdoors with great importance given to nature, why this choice?
RJ: It’s like evolution in eight minutes, from the dawn of man to opulence. I don’t believe in the hermit or that kind of romantic image. Today you can’t really “cut yourself off from the world,” even in nature—one way or another, it catches up with you.
HFF: Where did you shoot these scenes outside?
RJ: In Switzerland. The whole film was shot in one location. The trick was to disguise that fact—varying angles and compositions so it never felt like we were only a few meters from the same place.
HFF: Did you have a precise shooting script?
RJ: Just a bare-bones, one-page plan. We filmed in story order, in four hours, and kept takes to an absolute minimum.
HFF: There is a certain calm in your film due to the sound atmosphere, how did you create it?
RJ: All the sound design and foley were crafted from scratch by Tom Rees. I certainly didn’t make the task easy, yet he delivered an inventive and indispensable contribution to the film.
HFF: After watching, the result is a sociological questioning about the place of man in a modern materialistic society, what message do you want to convey?
RJ: As you say, it’s about questioning—not delivering a message, not a canned answer, and definitely not a moral lecture. Objects—extensions of the human hand—are like a pharmakon: both antidote and poison. What matters is how we use them, and to what end. They can be a cage, or a release.
HFF: Your film partly deals with the question of human evolution with a man both creator and destroyer, did you want to denounce something?
RJ: I’m not denouncing or discovering anything—it’s ancient history. The duality of man: love/death, creation/destruction, old like the hills. Like that image of Kubrick in the fake ruins of Huế, which he actually rebuilt in suburban London for Full Metal Jacket; he revels in it, thoroughly pleased with himself.
HFF: Are you comfortable with this era?
RJ: What about you ?
HFF: Your character uses a Super 8 camera, what is your relationship to film cinema?
RJ: I like that at FAMU in Prague, for instance, they get young filmmakers comfortable shooting on film. Of course I’d love to shoot a film on film; sadly, it’s still sometimes pretty expensive for independent filmmakers. I think Kodak has been working for years on a new Super 8 camera, and there’s a real “lo-fi” trend around that. For me it isn’t nostalgia—digital cameras do a great job and are more practical, lighter. But I miss the roughness, the rawness, the grain—the sense that you can’t cheat. I’m not swooning over the all-6K, absolute-HD look; things feel a bit too uniform now.
HFF: How do you see the future of modern cinema?
RJ: Perhaps the same answer Jean-Luc Godard offers in Notre Musique when asked about digital cameras and the “future of cinema.” A perfect excuse for you to watch it.
HFF: Has your film been screened at festivals? Is it available somewhere?
RJ: Single-Use is currently on a festival run. This week it’s in the official selection at the Zambian Short Film Festival. It has also won awards at the Thilsri International Film Festival (India), the Mindfield Film Festival (USA), and the Swedish Film Awards (online).
HFF: Do you plan to carry out a project similar to this short film, maybe a sequel?
RJ: Above all, to keep making films. A sequel? No, absolutely not. Every film is a sequel anyway —an endless reprise of the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.
Thank you Richard!
By Hallucinea Film Festival
Single-use is in competition at the 20th edition of Hallucinea Film Festival. Results - 2025, October 29.
