On the Ninth Day of Christmas

Everyone has a song they love to dance to. That universal truth was director Saam Farahmand’s starting point when he set out to capture his friends moving to their favorite tunes in his ongoing project Video Portraits. Farahmand dips into his personal rolodex for subjects—a wide ranging group including The Misshapes’ Geordon Nicol, artist Matthew Stone and Soulwax’s David Dewaele––then films them dancing in his "blue box." The resulting footage is projected onto a wall as he deejays. For today’s NOWNESS edit, Farahmand handpicked a sampling of ladies getting down that includes The Big Pink’s Akiko Matsuura and New York-based writer Karley Sciortino. “His only real direction was 'Drink this glass of wine and do whatever you want,'" says Sciortino. When not filming his friends, Farahmand shoots spots for commercial clients such as Guinness and Nokia, and music videos for the likes of Klaxons, Mark Ronson and The Business International, and Hercules and Love Affair.