Familiar Tourist – Campaign Video

Familiar Tourist…

A filmic meditation on movement, memory, and place, a dreamlike journey that reframes the vast and often mythologised outdoors. In this collaboration between Purple Mountain Observatory and Director-Videographer Jack Flynn, the film charts an ambiguous path through the Dolomites, untethered from geography or narrative, yet grounded by the quiet familiarity of their new collection.

“With each scene, the viewer is thrown further and further into a land unknown to them,” says Joe. “Falling into the same disorientation our explorers feel as they traverse the terrain laid out in front of them.”

What begins as a still observation of nature’s scale slowly evolves into a portrait of people not quite belonging, yet moving as if compelled by instinct. The familiar becomes alien; the alien, sublime. Light cuts across jagged ridgelines. Bodies blur against stone. Time folds into itself.

This is not a film about the Dolomites — it’s a film about being in unknown territory, in familiar gear. Flynn, who previously lensed PMO’s AW24 campaign, once again distills that signature atmosphere: grounded yet abstract, remote yet emotionally present.

As the film unfolds, it expands the world of Purple Mountain Observatory, peeling back layers of perception to reveal a shifting relationship between terrain and traveller. Though shot in Italy, the visual language suggests someplace else entirely, an unknown planet, a memory, a dream.

With the Dolomites as its canvas, Familiar Tourist asks: when the path becomes unfamiliar, how do we find our way?

Credit

Jack Flynn 

Yudai Tateishi 

Sofia Rainer