"Music lover, DJ, TV Director, Photo and Video Producer from Lugano, living in St. Moritz since 2011. Working around the world."
Since childhood I have been obsessed with technology. Every button, lever, tape, microphone and camera caught my attention. Since then my life has been intertwined with audio, music, photography, video, TV and movie.
It is stronger than me: only if I am in this world I don’t distinguish work from my personal life. And that for me means living life to the fullest, releasing and feeling the true emotions and sensations.
Latest News
Prague, Photo-Video Shootings & Music
NOVEMBER 2023
My adventure around the world ends with the Prague Grand Prix. A complex production and long days but in a wonderful setting (Gallery). Prague won me over on everything: excellent cuisine, warm and friendly people, architecture, history and beauty in general. It was a challenging year but I am happy to have had this professional experience.
While in St. Moritz, winter is approaching and consequently the photo and video productions (Behind The Scenes in Gallery) for my clients also start "galloping"...
As far as music is concerned, I am happy to present my remix of a song by my dear friend, Ticino musician and songwriter Frank D'Amico, available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music and other music platforms.
In Riyadh, you don't need a cashmere ...
OCTOBER 2023
A trip to Riyadh for the Longines Global Champions Tour for the finals ahead of the Grand Prix in Prague. A difficult production, in the heat and in the sand. The biggest difficulty? Definitely not being able to enjoy a cold beer after the days work....
Then intense days with Katie Terpsma for a shoot for LAMM Cashmere St. Moritz in the wonderful Hotel Kronenhof in Pontresina.
Kronenhof… wasn’t built in a day
SEPTEMBER 2023
The Grand Hotel Kronenhof is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, just like the Swiss Constitution. To mark the occasion, we curated a Film about the celebration. Needless to say, working with the Staff of the Kronenhof is not really work, but a true emotional and culinary pleasure. As director a quick dive into the enchanting Rome...
London and Switzerland's largest insurance company
AUGUST 2023
A busy month... Among other productions, we made an Image Film for La Mobiliare Assicurazioni, which held a three-day workshop in St. Moritz at the Suvretta House Hotel with all general agents in Switzerland. For the Longine Global Champions Tour, I visited London, a city I loved in the 1990s and that has won my heart back.
All That Jazz, Clicks and Tapas
JULY 2023
For 10 years now, July has been my favorite month where childhood passions embrace my gray hair. Every year we produce the videos for the exclusive "Festival Da Jazz" in St. Moritz. A month behind and in front of the scenes, with unforgettable encounters with musicians from all over the world and, last but not least, weeks lived with the whole festival team that has now become a real little family.
On the photo front on the set for the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz and for ENDER SPORT's "St. Moritz" fashion line (Photos).
For the "Longines Global Champions Tour”, I worked in Spain at the A Coruna racecourse. I worked with a fantastic Galician team from national TV (Video).
Milan, Paris and Stockholm
JUNE 2023
June was a month I lived with my suitcase in hand. With friend and model Katie Terpsma (Photo and Gallery), I made the second single tagged Papunk. Katie did the vocal parts of the tribute track to Tom Ford, a global fashion icon. For the cover, video clip and promotional material we went to Milan for a completely "guerilla" photoshoot. “Loving Tom Ford” is available everywhere online, from Spotify to Tidal, from Apple Music to Youtube. Enjoy listening to it!
As director of the Longines Global Champions Tour, I visited St. Tropez, Cannes, Paris and the wonderful Stockholm. This city (Gallery) enraptured my heart. Maybe it was the good fortune of having visited it during the days of the summer solstice, maybe it was the order and cleanliness that distinguishes it, or maybe it was the tasty and healthy cuisine, I don't know, but I enjoyed it both from a professional and personal point of view. An open, friendly, engaging and innovative city. A city to keep in mind for the future, who knows.
New Music Release
MAY 2023
After a month in April with several DJ-Sets, I really got the urge to produce music again. So I sat down in the studio and re-familiarized myself with music editing software, which has evolved tremendously over the past 20 years. It didn't seem real to me to be able to process sound in a much faster and simplified way. So, during a night of insomnia, I created "Sexting," as a tribute to LaTour's "People are still having sex" from 1991, however talking about the Sexting phenomenon, which is causing several parents around the world to worry.
The song is signed with my pseudonym "Papunk," a cognate name from my children that means "the Punk Daddy." The song is available everywhere online, from Spotify to Tidal, from Apple Music to Youtube. Enjoy listening to it!
Hello America
APRIL 2023
In parallel with several video productions in Engadine, I also traveled with Longines in April for the Global Champions Tour. Two intercontinental stages in very complex technical situations. In Miami we made the Live Broadcasts with the equipment of InAria, for which I work as TV-Director, in a "Fly" solution. The control rooms for the Host and Live Studio were set up inside some containers. The bad weather did not facilitate the production but we finally managed to get on air. Then Mexico City, in an also spectacular setting surrounded by the green Mexican city at 2300 meters above sea level. The equipment was provided by a local company and we shared the staff with FOX Sports. Communication with the staff, who knew little English, was a little difficult initially, but in the end we brought the project home.
On Tour
MARCH 2023
Filippo: Origin from the Greek “Philos”, friend, and “Hippos”, horse
Sometimes in life things really happen by accident. When I was a child, I never imagined that my work and passion would later meet the horse world, despite the fact that I spent a childhood with schoolmates teasing me as "the horse's friend." Well, I eventually became one.
Since 2013, I started producing video content for the famous Snow Polo St. Moritz and White Turf events. Then for three summers I also oversaw the production of CSI Longines St. Moritz. Three productions like any other for me in my personal consideration. But it didn't quite work out that way…
In fact, this year I have the honor of touring the world as TV-Director of the Formula 1 of world horse jumping, the “Longines Global Champions Tour”. From Qatar to Miami, from Mexico City to Monte Carlo, being a director in the world's best OB trucks, with technology that gets me excited, is an indescribable professional satisfaction. Shooting with OB trucks is exciting. It feels a bit like a super-technological Circus, and working outdoors involves a constant adrenaline fund for its attached risks, and when you say "We are out" the energy is indescribable.
Fashion Shooting
FEBRUARY 2023
After a few months without working in my Photography Studio, I had the pleasure of shooting a very young girl who has all the cards to become a successful model. Joana does not have a lot of experience yet but she is learning very fast. It was a pleasure to see her and her mom happy with the result that opened the doors of a well-known agency... But this is Top Secret...
Back on Stage
JANUARY 2023
Celebrating 30 years since my first dance production
In 1993 I released my first Dance single "The Time is Right" celebrating my 18th birthday by touring the best discos all over Switzerland. It is now 30 years later, the hair has become grayer, the physique is a bit more "worn out" but the desire to entertain is still great. To celebrate this anniversary I decided to return to the DJ-Console at some historic locations in St. Moritz. I also rolled up my sleeves and reopened Logic Audio after more than 20 years and had fun remixing a wonderful song by Gianni Morandi and Lucio Dalla entitled "VITA”. A production that has no pretensions of becoming who knows what, but which I dedicate with all my heart to my children's mother Allegra, a wonderful woman, perfect mom and indispensable professional partner in my life.
Thanks Allegra!
About
The birth of passions
Hello! I am Filippo Giani and I was born on September 27, 1975 in Lugano, a small town in Ticino, Switzerland. Even as a child I followed the Traditional Jazz band "The old Time Ramblers" in which my father was the trumpet player. My passion for music led me to study trumpet and music theory at the school of the Lugano Philharmonic, but the technique was immediately felt and quite naturally I began to be the sound technician for the band.
Already during elementary school I began to love video. With my first camera still predating VHS, I filmed everything and invented a way to edit with an old VCR. When I was only 10 years old I was able to connect my small TV studio in my small bedroom with the living room of my grandparents who lived beyond my backyard. On Sundays I would broadcast my small programs live to friends and relatives who were guests of my grandparents. My first Broadcast connection 10 years before the birth of the Internet.
Time to take the stage: the 90’s
During secondary school I became interested in the world of DJs, and when I was only 16 I started working in a disco in St. Moritz. A year later I was resident DJ at the well-known ABSOLUT St. Moritz nightclub and in 1993, at only 18 years old with my high school graduation to face at the door, I released my first Dance record "The Time is Right" under the name DJ Filo feat. Amadeus, distributed in more than 20 countries worldwide under the FRESH MUSIC label that at that time launched the famous Swiss rapper DJ BOBO.
After high school I moved to Milan to major in Public Relations with a specialization in consumer sociology. During these years I worked in the recording studio of Stefano Secchi of PROPIO Records and then with a studio of the EMI MUSIC group. With them and with my personal label RIGHT TIME MUSIC I produced until the early 2000s about 30 Dance tracks. Also during this period I began to collaborate with several local and national Italian radio stations, including 101 Network in Milan.
Meet the web 1.0
As a graduate work I presented a study on search engines, which at that time were a big novelty and google did not exist yet. To better explain how they worked, I created almost as a joke a news site dedicated to the Ticino region: ticinonews.ch. Unpredictably, the site began to be clicked and in a short time became one of the most viewed portals in Ticino. I then graduated and focused on this project and was among the first in Switzerland to distribute streaming audio and video, using prehistoric techniques mostly invented or discovered by accident.
This invention then gave me the opportunity to create my first radio and TV programs, which later, having been matched in the internet of the first era, were requested by real radio and TV stations.
Work, family & passions: one life
Over the past two decades, I have thus produced thousands of hours of audio and video for private clients, national and international television, web portals, social media and cinema.
In a whisker I will touch my 50th birthday and I am happy that my profession is also my passion. I have two children who are now teenagers and an ex-wife who puts up with me and with whom I run our family business ibexmedia.ch. Today I have the freedom to choose the projects I am most interested in, the people I prefer to work together with, and finally each of my days is different from the other. One day I produce a video, one day I make music, one day I photograph, one day I program a website, and often I take a plane and travel the world as TV-Director.
Creativity is linked to pragmatism
The term pragmatism was coined by Peirce in the terminological sense used by Immanuel Kant, who distinguished a "practical reason" (praktisch), understood as the rational foundation of the moral law, and a "pragmatic reason" (pragmatisch) in the sense of a rationality directed toward the achievement of a concrete end:
"[...] for those who, like the author, had learned philosophy from Kant [...] and still thought without difficulty in Kantian terms, praktisch and pragmatisch were concepts as distant from each other as the two poles, the former belonging to a sphere of thought within which no mind of the experimentalist type could ever believe that it was walking on stable ground and the latter denoting the relation to a definite human end."
There is actually a profound conceptual difference from the essentially formal Kantian reason quite different from the pragmatic reason that is understood as a process of active intervention in reality.
Take Action!
Would you like to support my "nonprofit" projects?
For years I have been regularly helping associations aimed at children, supporting artists, actors, artisans, musicians, singers and helping them with their communication. Every donation you make will be directly invested in these projects to cover at least part of the running expenses. You will be contacted to find out how I used your donation. Thank you very much.
