Director and former Gondry assistant François Néméta sends along the following description of Debut for Heineken. You can see the commercial at Shots. Images can be seen at the other Michel Gondry site, archived here.
shot in Brno, Czech Republic, in summer'95.
the visual inspiration for this one was "soviet" movies, like "man with the movie camera" by Dziga Vertov (1929). many in-camera effects, double exposures, beautiful photographic stuff.
it tells the story of an opera in Moscow in the 80's, where everybody goes to the bar, instead of going to see the play, only because it's the first place where they sell Heineken Beer in Russia....
I remember it as a fun shoot, with 500 extras all through the night, many russian people, ... oh and I guess I'm in this one, dressed as a russian soldier!!! joke ;-)