Irma Vep

Olivier Assayas’s HBO series Irma Vep is perhaps the best film/TV series/whatev about filmmaking that I’ve seen. If his 1996 film version, starring Maggie Cheung was a grungy version and a love letter to its Hong Kong starlet, and low budget 'French' filmmaking, The series is bigger and more indepth look at filmmaking in the age of globalism with secondary characters more fleshed out - Assayas taking advantage of the long form. Thanks to Assayas, I have a better understanding of filmmakers’ compulsion to make movies one after another. That there’s a sadness in btwn projects because you see your film crew as a surrogate family and you want to have that constantly not to get lonely. I never thought of it that way before.

Also it’s a beautiful way of seeing the film as a spiritual medium capturing the ghost of the past in many different ways.

So this is Irma Vep related story. In ep.3, Mira wears what looks like a Korean folk tiger shirt and I wanted it. I did some googling and it directed me to a French band, The Great Divide, website. I ordered a t-shirt. Two weeks later, I get an email:

The Great Divide Sep 15 to The, bcc, me

Hi,

I'm Antoine, The Great Divide guitarist. I might have reach you earlier regarding your order, please find further information below.


First of all, we are deeply sorry for the lack of attention paid to your order.


As the band is on hiatus, nobody delt with the bandcamp and emails lately. We have been noticed only yesterday that our tiger T features in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vepp series on Alicia Vikander’s shoulders. Following that, our bandcamp has been crushing under orders of that tee.

We assessed the stocks and the shipping fees, and we are not in the position to fulfill the order with the set up deal. We mostly sold our merch at our shows, therefore did not pay a closer look to the fees for worldwide shippings. Almost all of these new orders are to be shipped worldwide and these fees reach €30 per item through the French postal service, way above the €5.50 we previously asked for, putting us in the position to sell at a loss.

We are canceling all orders and proceeding to full refunds. We updated the product page with the appropriate price & fees and will ship the new orders by the end October if you would kindly decide to place a new one in support of the band.

Please accept our apologies and bear in mind that we are not a company but a punk band which primary focus was to play and share music with others.

Don't hesitate to answer to this email if you did not receive your refund or if you have any questions. Best regards, Antoine Pépin