Thomas Bangalter

“I’m going to start with Modern Times. When I was three years old – I’m an only child – and my parents, they put me in the living room with a VCR and a Modern Times Betamax tape, they taught me how to press play and rewind, and I basically brainwashed myself. And I think it was really the start of my love for Charlie Chaplin, and also, I think, my obsession with the relationship between mankind and human and technology and alienation and society and how modernity is really interacting with us.”

“Sisters, Brian De Palma. At 12 years old, I was obsessed with Brian De Palma. With Guy-Man, from Daft Punk, before we started to make music, every Wednesday I would go to the video store and pick up a film and bring it. I was mostly also obsessed with Phantom of the Paradise, and Sisters is as close as you can get to Phantom of the Paradise. It’s the film that he directed just before. It has William Finley, the same actor, that plays this time a very scary character and great Bernard Herrmann...”

“This is Spike Jonze’s first feature, Being John Malkovich. Thirty years ago, a few blocks from here, we were with Spike when he shot the first Daft Punk music video, “Da Funk,” with Lance Acord as the cinematographer. And a few months, a few years after that, Spike directed his first film. It’s an instant classic. I love it and I highly recommend it.”

“Martha Graham: Dance on Film. I haven’t seen this, but I was born and raised in a family of dancers. My Mother was a ballet and contemporary dancer. My aunt was a dancer. My uncle was a choreographer. My wife is an actress and a dancer, Élodie, and she’s the biggest Martha Graham fan, and I can’t wait to bring it home and watch it with her.”

“The Color of Pomegranates, Sayat-Nova. I think it’s The Most Beautiful film ever made. Music for the eyes. Every shot is a poem. The closest would be, like, a film adaptation of Carl Jung’s Red Book. You go into this medieval symbolism of Armenian troubadours, and Parajanov is a genius. This is really a masterpiece.”

“Okay, this is David Fincher, The Game. It’s probably my favorite David Fincher movie. I still have that on Criterion laserdisc, actually, that I purchased in the ’90s. I really feel it was a big influence for me on this relationship between fiction and reality, because with Daft Punk and the robots and the narrative, that’s, I feel, what we were exploring also for all these years, especially when it utilizes almost a lot of extras and production techniques from film.”

“This is Thomas Vinterberg, The Celebration. I think I’ve picked a lot of silent films, in fact, films with almost no dialogue where the power of cinema goes to the imagery and the music. And here’s a movie with dialogue, and here’s a film where it’s probably the most visceral and powerful experience I’ve ever had in filmgoing, in a theater, when it came out. The audacity of speaking up and breaking The Silence and breaking the cycles of abuse, it’s just a masterpiece.”

“The Qatsi Trilogy. Koyaanisqatsi, I saw Koyaanisqatsi when I was fifteen years old. This was a big inspiration, I think, when we directed Electroma with Daft Punk and I did the cinematography, because it’s The Most Beautiful example of available-light cinematography. And Philip Glass’s score is just a masterpiece. I think this is, again, like this visual album. I can’t stop watching it.”