FAST CLIPS: The Video for Roy Kafri’s “Mayokero” by Vania Heymann Is a Simple Nostalgic Pleasure

Vania Heymann’s video for Roy Kafri’s "Mayokero" is both spare and complex. It’s a pop cascade, in a sense, but what pop! Serge Gainsbourg, The Smiths, Prince, Madonna, Simon and Garfunkel, and many, many others show up on album covers tossed on an urban side street; their mouths move, singing the simple, catchy track for the video. The camera spins over these images, and then we see a homeless man going through the albums, and then we get the rest of the story: a reverse sequence showing the albums’ original purchase, a wistful look back at the days when you had to get up and drop a needle in a groove to listen to your favorite song–a needle which might skip sometimes, or might give away a scratch on the vinyl. There aren’t too many bells and whistles to Vania Heymann’s work here–in fact the camera work has a pointedly do-it-yourself feel, with one exception: the moving mouths. Even that gesture, though, is a recall of early TV comedy days, when a famous person’s picture, wth lips moving, might just make you laugh. We’re more sophisticated now–or are we? The video for "Mayokero" is proving remarkably popular, with 41,000 Vimeo plays in less than a week–it raises the question as to whether this sort of simplicity is just what video-watchers need right now.