You Will Be With Us in Paradise, a new feature-length documentary by Isaac Lock, premieres this week with screenings in London and on NOWNESS
In the run up to the London relaunch of Fiorucci in 2017, director Isaac Lock followed the brand’s new owners, Stephen and Janie Schaffer. The results of Lock’s studies is You Will Be With Us in Paradise, a feature-length documentary that premieres this week with screenings in London (on October 16 and 17) and on NOWNESS.
Fiorucci began in Milan in the 1960s, before moving to New York in the 70s until 1988. Described in the documentary by Diane Von Furstenberg as “like the pulse of the city”, Fiorucci was famed for its riotous stores, attended by the likes of Madonna and Andy Warhol, and came to define New York’s glamorous, hedonistic youth culture in the 1970s. The news of its relaunch in London was met with mixed reactions.
“I first met Stephen and Janie Schaffer in their offices, surrounded by Fiorucci archive pieces and feng shui trinkets, and was immediately fascinated,” says Lock of the film. “They were so bold and candid, and very open about the difficulties they were facing in taking on a project – the relaunch of Fiorucci – that they readily admitted was not really any of their business. In their words, they weren’t Italian, they had never worked in high fashion, and they certainly weren’t young.”
Lock documents the various setbacks encountered by the Schaffers as they relaunch Fiorucci, from construction complications to missing garments, along with input from characters who were there in the thick of the brand’s New York heydey and previously unseen archival footage. You Will Be With Us in Paradise is Lock’s first feature-length film, described by NOWNESS’ creative director Bunny Kinney as a “witty, weird and wonderful film” in Lock’s “signature dry comic style”, and also marks the first long-form film to appear on NOWNESS. Watch a trailer for the documentary below.
You Will Be With Us in Paradise is screening at Everyman Cinema Screen on the Green, Islington, on October 16, 2019, with a Q&A with Isaac Lock, and at Everyman Baker Street on October 17, 2019.
The film premieres on NOWNESS on October 18, 2019.