Nagi Noda

They didn't just break the mould when they made Nagi Noda. They broke the thing they made the mould with, too. Annie Dare talks to a true original whose latest ad campaign is set to put the fizz right back into Coca-Cola

Nagi Noda, fresh signed to Partizan worldwide (excluding Japan), is just dusting down her debut in international music videos with a job for Tiga, and has her chamois leather sheening up her first international ad campaign for Coca-Cola through Mother London. For which Jack White from The White Stripes wrote the soundtrack, thank you very much. Those zeitgeisters at Gas Book have just devoted their latest volume to a DVD retrospective of her back catalogue, all mint printed for the international design purist pack this February. And the ink''''s still drying on the invites to the April exhibition of her bonkers half-panda sculptures at überhip Parisian gallery Colette (whose past exhibitors include illustrators like Geneviève Gauckler and Paul Davis). Add to which the fact that her Ex-Fat Girl short (you know the one, poodles, fitness studio, totally mad) scorched its way around the festival circuit: onedotzero, Resfest et al.

It''''s fairly safe to say that Noda has just gone global. So yah boo sucks to all talk of a Japanese creative glass ceiling: there''''s no evidence of any shards on Noda''''s polished creative CV. But then the 33-year-old wasn''''t brought up to be pigeonholed by anything as run of the mill as gender difference. Hell no. When she was small, Noda''''s artist parents sheared her hair short and dressed her up as a boy. Girly clothes were strictly off limits: no pink, no floral print and absolutely no lace. The first film she saw, The Exorcist, was hardly plucked from the My Little Pony shelf of the video shop either.

Not content with cross-dressing, her parents stamped their intellectual preoccupations on their daughter, sitting out on their balcony at night to search the skies for UFOs, filling her mind with talk of the apocalypse, the afterlife and the spirit world. They fed her mental muscle by starving her of visuals, weaning her off colour TV so she was forced to "imagine colour by myself from black and white".

Alongside this creatively stimulating deprivation, Noda''''s parents indulged her other childish wants to the point of eccentricity. "I loved my dolls and wanted to be with them constantly. This wasn''''t always practical as I had to eat, sleep and so on. My parents'''' solution was to attach two dolls to me: one to my front and
one to my back. In this way, they were always with me," she says. The little boy-girl, with dolls strapped to her chest and back, sat in front of the black-and-white Exorcist, her mind full of her parent''''s talk of UFOs
and Armageddon - Linda Blair would be proud.

Noda happily volunteers the details of her upbringing, her childhood being an abiding preoccupation that she shares with her new stablemate, Michel Gondry. As Partizan head of music video Sasha Nixon points out: "Few other people match his obsession with childhood, with dreams, with innocence in the same way that she does."

Others have suggested that it''''s not just in content and production company that Noda and Gondry''''s creative worlds collide: Noda''''s beautiful video for Yuki, Sentimental Journey, carries something of the scent of Gondry''''s Around the World video for Daft Punk. Was it a conscious homage? "I hate this question. Who have you heard that from?" Noda fires back. Predictably, for someone so creatively idiosyncratic across such a range of media, a comment suggesting anything less than absolute originality is taken as a slur.

Georges Bermann, Partizan chairman, is circumspect about the parallels between the two exact pieces of work, but less quick to reject all cross-fertilization entirely out of hand: "As far as Gondry''''s influence goes, he could be an inspiration for directors, which is great. But some of them just copy and paste his work and then put their name on it. Nagi Noda most definitively does not fall into the copy-paste category."

Noda started out as an art director designing print advertising, books and CD sleeves before moving to direct for clients like Nike and what must be the world''''s best advertising client - well, in the department store category at least - LaForet, Tokyo. She''''s not one to live constrained in the worlds of advertising and music video (the inevitable feature film script is in the offing) and won''''t cage her creativity in just moving image either: the Colette exhibition features the bizarre bodies of 16 two-meter tall Han Pandas, her hybrid character creation that is half panda, half other animal (han means half in Japanese).

But when she does work in advertising, as with many directing greats, she has a hand-in-glove relationship with her DP. "His name is Shoji Uchida," Noda says. "I have worked with him on lots of music videos, commercials, short films, CD jackets, fashion shoots for magazines, advertising stills... Not only is he my best friend, he is the best DP in Tokyo. My images are always hard to shoot, so I need a really good relationship."

With such strong credentials and collaborators, as well as a fierce reputation as Tokyo''''s female number one, it''''s a wonder it''''s taken so long for an international production company to get Noda on their books, admits Bermann. "We didn''''t sign Noda sooner because she passed below our radar for a while… We''''re now readjusting our radar system," he says. Does the language or gender issue worry him at all? "Noda is one of at least five female directors we''''re representing. But we never looked at their work simply because it was directed by a woman." Bermann is in the comfortable position of being blind to everything but The Work. "A talented director is a talented director, regardless of his or her nationality, sex, religion… whatever. To me all these factors are totally irrelevant: the work should just speak for itself." And what does Noda make of her new production company home? "I heard that they are great. And they were great to me."

Other career decisions are shouldered similarly lightly, and similarly simply. She set up her own production company, Uchu-Country, in 2003 in Tokyo''''s Aoyama district "because I''''d like to work with my dogs, and also I''''d like to use big space to make creative things." Amen to that.