Citroën DS3: Blenders/TVs/Telephones

More than a few creatives reading this would likely give their right eye to have 18 Cannes Lions, 20 Clios, and more than 400 other awards from the likes of One Show, D&AD, Ojo de Iberoamerica and more, on a decade-long CV. But despite his glittering career, Jonathan Gurvit has just turned the page to a new and exciting chapter in his life – directing – and it’s a chapter he’s the author of. “I’ve been filming as a creative for more than 10 years now, and as time went by, I became more and more interested in finding a way to produce my own ideas,” says Gurvit.

It was last January when he finally decided to take the directorial plunge, selecting himself to shoot a spot for Santander Bank while he was working for them as creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in his native Argentina. “I just felt in my guts that I had to do it.” That film won him a bronze Lion at Cannes last year, a feat most people would call incredible for a first-timer, but which he calls “madness”.

His latest work is a series of three spots for Citroen’s CS3, a car that bucks the recent trend of retro small vehicles. The spots each show a collection of retro appliances (blenders, TVs and telephones) being destroyed in ways normally reserved for a Terminator film, but it wasn’t as easy as just smashing stuff up. Gurvit learned through extensive testing that he had to weaken the TVs and blenders in certain places and use explosive charges to make them shatter more artistically. Another issue to contend with was his art director, who “cried the whole way through shooting” as she watched the items they had scoured for on online auctions and vintage markets turned to dust.

Already signed with Primo Buenos Aires, Passion RAW (US and Europe), PBA Cinema (Brazil), Mercurio (Italy) and D’Avant-Garde (US Hispanic market), Gurvit didn’t have to wait long for his next job and is currently working on a project with DRAFTFCB Mexico, among others.

 “What I want is to shoot pieces that make people say things like, ‘awesome!’, ‘wow!’ or ‘amazing!’. I also want to make more experimental things, related to art and technology, whether they’re linked to advertising or not,” enthuses Gurvit, who is adamant that he’ll never stop being a creative. “I’ll have my creative hat on all my life. I don’t believe much in labelling people. Creative or director, I feel it’s really the same thing. I believe in people who know what they want and know how to do it.” 

There’s no doubt Jonathan Gurvit knows what he wants and how to do it. The only question is how many pages he’ll eventually add to his huge CV.