Director Alma Har’el, who launched the #FreeTheBid movement to get more female directors in advertising, has unveiled a short film exploring the emotion of scent for Chanel.
JellyWolf is an eight minute short film for The Fifth Sense, a digital platform collaboration with the fashion house and online magazine i-D, that explores scents in the form of visuals.
The film stars Kiersey Clemons and Lisa Bonet in the a fantasy story where a young woman visits an occultist shop in LA wanting to undergo a visionary experience. She sneezes her way into another world – one inhabited with the tangible scent notes of Chanel Nº5 L'eau.
In an interview with Vice’s sister title i-D, Har’el said the story was inspired by synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon where a sensation in one of the senses, such as hearing, triggers a sensation in another, such as taste.
It allows some people, for example, to experience scents as images.
Seeing scents
Source: Chanel/Alma Har’e
“It’s the idea that certain scents can evoke images, and that our senses cross paths,” said Har’el.
“My friend Dexter told me one night over dinner that she always experienced the words ‘white house’ as a cake she can taste and seen days of the week as a circle suspended in the air.
“When I told her about the condition suddenly everything made sense to her; it’s a really dope condition, your senses take creative licence with reality.”
Chanel launched the platform to help promote and celebrate millennial female creatives and the power of fragrance.
The Fifth Sense features daily updates showcasing women from a broad spectrum of genres, such as films, documentaries and photographers, while echoing the heritage of Coco Chanel.
“A process is something that always changes for me, especially for instance, on a project like this, which has one leg rooted in my ideas and the other in Chanel’s long heritage. I think that every step of what I learn informs the next one by necessity,” said Har’el.