DEATH TO TENNIS by Hamadou Frédéric Baldé

In 2015, between New York and Paris, a chance encounter gave rise to a film that is both instinctive and free and deeply collaborative in spirit. Filmmaker Hamadou Frédéric Baldé was then living in New York, a city already shaping his visual language with raw energy, diverse bodies, and a hybrid visual culture. It was there that he met Vincent Oshin, co-founder of the New York based label Death to Tennis, whose singular approach reinterprets the codes of classic sportswear and tailoring into something more fluid, poised between elegance and subversion.

The connection was immediate. A few weeks later, HF returned to Paris for a shoot, where he met producer Hadrien Penavaire. This encounter marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration, with this film becoming their first project together.

Meanwhile, the creative dialogue with New York continued. Vincent Oshin sent over a key piece from the collection, a poncho called Uniform, and gave HF complete creative freedom. With no brief and no constraints, HF approached the project as a space for exploration, staying true to an intuitive process where the garment becomes a starting point rather than an end in itself.

The film was then developed in Paris, driven by a sense of creative urgency. Shot over two nearly continuous days, across locations ranging from Montmartre to the Buttes-Chaumont and the 13th arrondissement, it captures a shifting, almost instinctive energy. In front of the camera, Louis Samka embodies a strong physical presence, somewhere between performance and portrayal.

Around him, a close-knit team helped shape the vision. Director of photography Cécile Friedman crafted a textured and sensitive visual language, while the artistic direction by Catia Mota Da Cruz informed by her background in choreography infused the film with an organic sense of movement and physicality.

The choice of black and white came naturally. It strips the image down to its essentials, emphasizing contrasts, textures, and gestures, and giving the film a timeless quality. The « Uniform » becomes a structuring element, almost sculptural, around which the visual composition unfolds.

Much like Death to Tennis itself, the film resists fixed definitions. It exists somewhere between a fashion film and an artistic proposition, driven by HF’s intuitive approach, where narrative gives way to sensation.

This project ultimately marks a pivotal moment: a first collaboration with a producer, a transatlantic creative exchange between New York and Paris, and the emergence of a visual language that is still evolving, yet already distinctly its own.

Hamadou Frédéric Baldé