Passing on the craft, and a shared love of cinema

From the moment Carl De Moncharline arrived at the Mirano, Aldo Gigli guided him: the club's internal organisation, who controlled what, everyone's temperament. Those conversations happened over countless coffees, in the snack bar right next to the club. There was no course and no method there, only an older man who took the time to explain, never once making the difference in age or standing felt. It is a kind of transmission that leaves nothing in writing and still lasts a lifetime: how to hold a deadline, how to defend an idea in front of a team, how to understand who you are talking to before you speak.

The two men also shared a passion for cinema. Carl favoured auteur films, while Aldo was a great collector of film scores. That bond became concrete at the Brussels Film Festival, for which they designed the sets, the communication and a Nouvelle Vague-inspired cafeteria together. Aldo built the models for these projects in his office, next door to the Mirano. At K comme Communication (KCC), the group's advertising agency, Carl was Marco Roland's assistant artistic director: it was within that team that they worked together on their shared passion.

The Mirano itself never quite stopped being a cinema. In the early part of the evening, before the night tipped into full swing, films were still screened there. The old cinema seats were gone, replaced by simple metal chairs; people smoked, talked back to the screen and laughed, and every screening turned into a collective ritual, wildly festive. Carl carried on that original function of the Mirano: bringing cinema into the night, and the night into cinema.

In 1981 the Mirano presented John Waters' “Polyester”, starring Divine, in its “Odorama” process: every spectator received a card numbered one to ten, to be scratched the moment the number appeared on screen, releasing the smell of the scene. Much later, during his own years at the Mirano, Carl revived the scratch-and-sniff idea for the Luna Park nights.

Carl's archives keep several flyers for those films screened at the Mirano as early-evening events. They bear witness to a programme that did more than simply fill the room before the dance floor opened: it carried on the venue's identity, cinema as the prelude to the party, and the party as the continuation of cinema.

That office, cluttered with inks, felt-tip pens, boards and records, was a workplace as much as a place to talk. Films, music and projects were discussed there, and you left with an idea that had become feasible. Many of the nights Carl later signed began with a sentence spoken there, between two layouts.

Aldo Gigli also worked in Paris, for cinema, theatre and advertising, collaborating with Nana Mouskouri, Yves Simon, Catherine Lara, Alain Delon and Stéphanie de Monaco. A set designer who moves from film set to stage, then from stage to dancefloor, does not build a nightclub decor: he builds a place the audience walks into as if entering a film. In 1998 he left Belgium for the Costa del Sol, where he went on designing private houses, restaurants and clubs, never stopping drawing places for other people.