- Product/Brand - Canon
- Spot - Gladiator Football
- Song Title - Sabre Dance
- Composer - Khachaturian
- Publisher - Imagem
- Artist - Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra
- Record Co - Supraphon
- Music Supervisor - Soundtree
- Ad Agency - JWT
- Creatives - Russell Ramsay, Adam Scholes, Anita Davis, Jonathan Budds
- Film Company - Academy
- Film Director - Jonathan Glazer
- Post Production - nineteentwenty
- Air Date - 15/9/14
Jonathan Glazer should need no introduction.
He is the British film director who first came to prominence in the 1990s via groundbreaking pop promos like Radiohead’s Street Spirit and Jamiroquai’s Mirrorball.
Among his cinematic credits are Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley’s cult classic Sexy Beast (2000) and last year’s disturbing psycho-sci-fi thriller Under The Skin starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien sex fiend!
Meanwhile Glazer’s commercial works include screen campaigns for a string of blue chip brands including VW and Levi’s as well as the renowned Guinness Surfer spot, believed by many to be one of the best TV ads ever.
Now Canon has recruited him to show off its top of the range EOS C500 camcorder by shooting the traditional game of Calcio Storico which has been played in Florence every June since medieval times.
To the tune of a Czech orchestra laying into Aram Khachaturian’s rousing 20th Century ballet piece Sabre Dance – also a Top 5 hit for Welsh guitar wizard Dave Edmunds in 1968 – Glazer looks on impassively as two teams of 27 players each literally battle it out in what is surely the most brutal and bloody form of street football imaginable.
