It Has Meaning You Cannot Imagine is film made by MATINAL, a Madrid-based Creative Studio & Community focusing on the culture around Post Football. It's a love letter to the legacy of the footbag.
Shot in Madrid, featuring Paloma Freestyle, 3x Spain freestyle football champion and footbag champ and connoiseur, playing with the Matinal Hacky Sack. The following is a conversation with Matinal's co-founder, fashion & sports photographer Pablo Alzaga.
What inspired you to make this film – 'It Has Meaning You Cannot Imagine' – and why footbag is part of Spanish culture?
We are super obsessed with the decontextualization of football and are always searching for new applications and communication formats. We are also into the concept of souvenir and how can we synthesize the essence of creative football on portable objects.
In one of these researches, we came across with the footbag, an object we used to play with during our childhood. We produced some Matinal custom hacky sacks and wanted to film a small piece focusing on them. I had this reference in mind from the fashion brand Études for years, in which some models are raving at random Paris spots, it’s really cool. I wanted to take the footbag out of context in a similar way, making it aspirational but respecting the legacy of our youth.
At that time we met Paloma, Spain freestyle football champion and of the biggest footbag culture connoiseurs in our country. She was very motivated with the film concept and helped us a lot developing all the narrative. Her performance in the video is amazing.