Director's Works
The Knocks ft. POWERS, Stay Gold Corey Wadden
Corey Wadden is a filmmaker and performance artist whose work blends movement, performance and emotionally raw storytelling.
An alumnus of the Marina Abramovic Institute, his unique directorial voice has earned him nominations at the UKMVAs and Berlin Commercial Awards.
When I first heard Stay Gold, I was struck by the contrast between the existential weight of the lyrics and the groove carrying them. At the time, I was navigating my own dark night of the soul and the song felt like a long hug from the future.
While developing the creative, I kept returning to Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Red as a comfort film. Ballet imagery appears throughout, and it sparked the idea of using ballet as the movement language for this story. It was an unconventional choice for the song, but it felt right. When I sent the treatment to our top choice for cinematographer, Alfonso, he told me Kieslowski was his personal favourite filmmaker. That alignment gave us confidence that we were on the right path.
Casting became an adventure of its own. Juliet connected with the character and grounded the emotional arc. To complete the narrative, we also needed performers to embody her at age seven and in her early eighties. By some strange stroke of luck, we found an eighty-two year old retired ballerina from the south of France living locally who looked like J, and we discovered a young girl who had never acted on camera but carried the right spirit. Working with both non actors added a layer of vulnerability that shaped the energy of the film.
We shot across three and a half days in Vancouver, moving through locations that added a dreamlike, fragmented quality to her journey. The goal was to create something emotionally honest, built from movement, memory, and the feeling of standing between who you were and who you hope to become.
