Sigur Rós: Valtari Film Experiment
Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.
John Cameron Mitchell
Ramin Bahrani
Floria Sigismondi
Christian Larson
Alma Har'el
Dash Shaw
Ragnar Kjartansson
Ryan McGinley
Nick Abrahams
Melika Bass
Ruslan Fedotov
Clare Langan
Casts & Crew
Shia LaBeouf
Denna Thomsen
Ryan Heffington
Austin Westbay
Aidan Gillen
Shirley Collins
Elle Fanning
John Hawkes
Ever Rabineau
Selma Banich
Also Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
In this Dior campaign video by director John Cameron Mitchell for the "L.A.dy Dior" handbag, Marion Cotillard parodies the real-life role we have all come to know so well: the crazy actress.
Life for a happy couple is turned upside down after their young son dies in an accident.
Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an “internationally ignored” but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a “beautiful gender of one.”
A group of New Yorkers caught up in their romantic/sexual milieu converge at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality, and loosely inspired by various underground NYC gatherings that took place in the early 2000s. Here, gay couple Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson) meet Ceth (Jay Brannan), a young ex-model and aspiring singer.
Croydon, 1977. A trio of punk teenagers goes to a party to meet girls, but they find that girls there are very different from what they expected.
Also Directed by Ramin Bahrani
A plastic bag, thrown out in the trash, attempts to find his way back to his owner and along the way discovers the world.
Reflections from Red Oak, Texas where a teenage son murdered his father.
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.
An exploration of the rise and fall of Richard Davis, the charming and brash inventor of the modern-day bullet-proof vest who shot himself 192 times to prove his product worked.
A man planning to commit suicide hires a taxi driver to take him to his jumping-off point.
Backgammon tells the tale of a young Iranian American girl who desperately wants to play backgammon with her stubborn grandfather who has recently arrived from Iran. Within the circle of a family gathering, the film brings together a subtle yet compelling story of generational conflicts and cultural identity.
In an idyllic suburban neighborhood, Jerry runs his big business lemonade stand and has the market cornered, until ten-year-old Addie opens her own stand across the street. Competition equals war, and both sides use (and abuse) a government regulator to try and win. In the end, one special customer will decide their fate.
An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller.
What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years? FutureStates is a series of fictional mini-features exploring possible future scenarios through the lens of today's global realities. Immerse yourself in the visions of these independent prognosticators as they project a future of their own imagining.
Set in the competitive world of modern agriculture, ambitious Henry Whipple wants his rebellious son Dean to help expand his family’s farming empire. However, Dean has his sights set on becoming a professional race car driver. When a high-stakes investigation into their business is exposed, father and son are pushed into an unexpected situation that threatens the family's entire livelihood.
Also Directed by Floria Sigismondi
Horror films dominated the cultural conversation in the year of 2017. From the surprise hit “Get Out” to the movie adaption of “It” to the campy “Happy Death Day,” scary movies had an unusual hold on the collective imagination during that year. Maybe it's because reality was pretty horrifying, too. To punctuate the end of a hair-raising year, The New York Times Magazine asked ten actors who gave the best performances to play a series of eerie roles.
On LA’s iconic Sunset Boulevard and inside the glamorous rooms of ChateauMarmont, Floria Sigismondi shot KennethAngerfor an additional special edition for System Magazine.
Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, two rebellious teenagers from Southern California, become the frontwomen for the Runaways -- the now-legendary group that paved the way for future generations of female rockers. Under the Svengali-like influence of impresario Kim Fowley, the band becomes a huge success.
The over-medicated, addicted, and misdiagnosed generation of today.
The New York Times Magazine presents ten famous performers as they create macabre scenes evoking the horror genre. Performances include a vampire, a cannibal, a mannequin, a demon child, a demented clown, a ghost bride, a psycho killer, a macabre dancer, a damned man, and a possessed woman.
A compilation of all of the band's music videos up until 1999. Also featured is exclusive footage cut from "The Dope Show" video and an hour of live and backstage footage from the Rock is Dead tour.
On LA’s iconic Sunset Boulevard and inside the glamorous rooms of ChateauMarmont, Floria Sigismondi shot Kenneth Anger for an additional special edition for System Magazine.
A young woman quits her teaching job to be a private tutor (governess) for a wealthy young heiress who witnessed her parent's tragic death. Shortly after arriving, the girl's degenerate brother is sent home from his boarding school. The tutor has some strange, unexplainable experiences in the house and begins to suspect there is more to their story.
Based on the comic book/graphic novel by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
A collection of Marilyn Manson's music videos.
Also Directed by Christian Larson
A music documentary following the breakup of Swedish House Mafia and their subsequent One Last Tour. The largest electronic tour in history, selling over 1 million tickets in one week. Director Christian Larson captures the band in a unique fly on the wall manner as they call it quits and seek closure by going on the tour they had always dreamed of. With breathtaking live moments, huge laughs and dark lows, the band start to unravel why they came to the decision to end the biggest achievement of their lives to date to save their friendship. The film maps out three of the biggest stars in a scene which has gripped youth the world over and the psychology of the band. A film not to be missed.
This unique film follows a group of 3 DJs Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso as Swedish House Mafia over the course of 2 years, 285 gigs and 15 countries. The film charts their journey from the point at which the Swedish House Mafia really starts to cause big waves to finishing their first hit single, ONE, under a ground breaking joint venture record deal with Virgin Records. There are appearences by Kylie Minogue, Pharell Williams, Tinie Tempah and Dirty South and the film was directed by Christian Larson.
Dance cinema meets music video at an abandoned industrial facility.
Also Directed by Alma Har'el
American citizens in more than 25 states are followed as they set out on the morning of the presidential election, throughout the course of the day, until the polls close in the evening and the results are revealed.
Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists. Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises...
Shadow Kingdom showcases Bob Dylan in an intimate setting as he performs songs from his extensive body of work, created especially for this event. Shadow Kingdom marks the first concert performance since December 2019, and first performance since his universally acclaimed album, Rough and Rowdy Ways.
After a life-altering revelation while tripping on psychedelic mushrooms, comedian Byron Bowers stumbles straight from the desert into the Decatur Boxing Club, to deliver an intimate set in his hometown Atlanta. Byron talks about his long journey to his first comedy special, the stigma of mental health, and how tripping on mushrooms made him understand his schizophrenic father and altered the way he feels about his Blackness.
Shadow Kingdom is a 2021 concert film featuring American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Directed by Israeli-American filmmaker Alma Har'el, it was shot on a soundstage in Santa Monica, California over seven days in early 2021 while Dylan was sidelined from his Never Ending Tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The story of a child star attempting to mend his relationship with his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father over the course of a decade, loosely based on Shia LaBeouf’s life.
From an Alaskan strip club, a Hawaiian island, and the streets of NYC—revelatory stories emerge about a deeper definition of love.
Set in a magical realist vision of Downtown LA, a young woman sets out on a journey to discover her inner queendom with the help of a mysterious shaman guide.
In a world without art, children, or books, humanity’s future hinges on a love triangle between an android, a man and a woman.
Also Directed by Dash Shaw
A zoo that rescues mythological creatures in psychedelic 1960’s San Francisco races the U.S. Military to find and save a Baku, a Japanese dream-eating cryptid, to prevent the military from using the Baku to eat the dreams of the counterculture and suppress the anti-Vietnam War movement. A hand-drawn, feature animated film.
A boy's childhood scars his life.
As cryptozookeepers struggle to capture a Baku (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) they begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a cryptozoo, or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown.
From acclaimed graphic novelist Dash Shaw (New School) comes an audacious debut that is equal parts disaster cinema, high school comedy and blockbuster satire, told through a dream-like mixed media animation style that incorporates drawings, paintings and collage. Dash (Jason Schwartzman) and his best friend Assaf (Reggie Watts) are preparing for another year at Tides High School muckraking on behalf of their widely-distributed but little-read school newspaper, edited by their friend Verti (Maya Rudolph). But just when a blossoming relationship between Assaf and Verti threatens to destroy the boys' friendship, Dash learns of the administration's cover-up that puts all the students in danger. Hailed as "the most original animated film of the year" and "John Hughes for the Adult Swim generation", the film's everyday concerns of friendships, cliques and young love remind us how the high school experience continues to shape who we become, even in the most unusual of circumstances.
Also Directed by Ragnar Kjartansson
The video Mercy (2005) presents an alt-country ode consisting of a single lyric — "Oh why do I keep on hurting you" — which Kjartansson, standing alone with a guitar, sings over and over in front of the camera like an actor perfecting his role. Now plaintive, now crass, now searching, now pleading, the line takes on a haunting quality not quite undercut by the tune’s tongue-in-cheek twang. The work introduced a recurring motif in the artist’s repertoire: the slick-haired singer, a persona Kjartansson has honed in real life as front man for the synth-heavy Reykjavík rock band Trabant, now on hiatus. The band’s performances — as seen on YouTube, anyway — have been blowout affairs, full of rock ’n’ roll swagger and screaming teenage fans. Mercy was a first step toward connecting this sassy streak with the artist’s maturing explorations of Icelandic identity.
No Tomorrow is a new video installation by Kjartansson, choreographer Margrét Bjarnadóttir, and composer Bryce Dessner. Spanning six screens that encircle the room, the installation surrounds viewers with a performance of spatial music written for eight dancers with eight guitars. Recorded from the center of the performers’ space, the installation is kaleidoscopic, capturing the dancers as they weave within each screen and across the channels; their movements and melodies ranging from pastorale to rock and roll. Combining a variety of classic Western references – blue jeans and white t-shirts, the draped silk curtains of mid-20th century song and dance films, as well as lyrics drawn from the Archaic Greek poet Sappho and adventurer Vivant Denon, two sensualists millennia apart – the work spins notions of idealization and iconography.
A celebration of creativity, community, and friendship, The Visitors (2012) documents a 64-minute durational performance Kjartansson staged with some of his closest friends at the romantically dilapidated Rokeby Farm in upstate New York. Each of the nine channels shows a musician or group of musicians, including some of Iceland’s most renowned as well as members of the family that owns Rokeby Farm, performing in a separate space in the storied house and grounds; each wears headphones to hear the others. As the music begins and repeats, individual players stop, start, and move between rooms. Viewed together, the individual videos present an ensemble performance Kjartansson calls a “feminine nihilistic gospel song.” The piece itself sets lyrics from a poem by artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Ragnar´s ex-wife, to a musical arrangement by the artist and Icelandic musician Davíð Þór Jónsson; the title comes from a 1981 album from Swedish pop band ABBA, meant to be its last.
Kjartansson appears bare-chested and buried waist-deep in a Reykjavik public park. Strumming a guitar, he plaintively sings the line—“Satan is real; he's working for me”—repeatedly for 64 minutes. As he does so, children frolic around him.
In this seven-channel video installation, two pairs of identical twin musicians circle each other, playing the same endless song.
Ragnar Kjartansson meets with American blues musician Pinetop Perkins in a field near Pinetop's home in Austin, Texas. Ragnar films Pinetop in the sunset, as he plays a piano and reminisces about his life and career.
Also Directed by Ryan McGinley
Watch Brad Pitt fly through the Everglades and dune-dive in White Sands in this film by Ryan McGinley for GQ Style.
Watch Brad Pitt fly through the Everglades and dune-dive in White Sands in this film by Ryan McGinley for GQ Style.
An omnibus of 42 short films by auteur directors based on Dreams.
Also Directed by Nick Abrahams
A brief canter through the life and work of one of Britain's most unbelievable artists.
Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams' film shows the impact of Basildon's biggest cultural export, Depeche Mode, using the stories and voices of devotees from around the world. Plotting an alternative history in which pop culture is given its due, and Basildon helped end the cold war, the film uncovers extraordinary tales of faith and devotion from Iran, Russia, Romania and even England.
A scattershot documentary about punk rock film makers in New York, with contributions from Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Richard Kern, Beth B, Nick Zedd and many others. A love letter to the New York Underground.
Also Directed by Melika Bass
A film portrait of an unstable entity in a haunted vessel, drawn into and floating away from a siren song.
A fractured, makeshift family ekes out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of Midwestern Gothic.
Waking nightmare, dreamless sleep.
A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.
A commissioned documentary chronicling an American dance company's collaboration with a Cuban dance company to create a site-specific performance for the Festival de la Cultura Iberoamericana.
An earthen fairy tale. A feast for the living.
Commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives, utilizing solely films from their collection.
A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.
Ladies in waiting in a house of mirrors.
Bass takes over the upstairs Kanter-McCormick Gallery at the Art Center, expanding the territory of her gothic world in a new work The Latest Sun is Sinking Fast, an immersive, multi-channel installation incorporating 16mm film/video, sound, architecture, and featuring performances by Sarah Stambaugh, Bryan Saner, and Matthew Goulish. The solo exhibition features a spatial narrative installation that delves, through movement, texture, sound, and gesture, into the psychology of a recurring figure in Bass' previous films; while also introducing two new characters, blending the past into the present. Bass has designed the installation by altering the gallery, leading the viewer through a evocative memory of place, embedding us in a timeless society of lost souls in a haunted landscape. -Allison Peters Quinn, Exhibition Director, Hyde Park Art Center
Also Directed by Ruslan Fedotov
A girl — or a woman — in a bright red scarf, with a soft toy mouse in her arms. To look at her, you wouldn’t guess that she’s 50 and has been homeless for three years. Her incredible passion to live prevents her from freezing on the cold streets of Moscow.
For generations, the Salamanca community of Mennonites has been living in the same modest and rigidly organized way. Modern-day scenes are accompanied by a voice-over narrating a man’s recollections of his youth. “As soon as I close my eyes,” he explains, “I go back to the past, to the moment when I made the choice that shaped my entire life.” Speaking in the Plautdietsch language, he talks calmly of the strong curiosity he felt as a young boy about the world beyond Salamanca and the Mennonite faith – a curiosity for which he paid dearly.
Documentary film by Ruslan Fedotov
This is ‘a road movie’ encapsulated in the Moscow metro system and filmed over the course of one year: a documentary film that observes cultural and social issues in modern Russia.
This is the story of one day in the life of a Georgian family. A fisherman's family celebrates Christmas day.
A heartbreaking portrait of 16-year-old Ukrainian refugees Andrey and Alisa, who help out at a school for refugee children in Budapest. Andrey asks the children to draw pictures of something from back home in Ukraine. What beautiful things can they recall? He offers the example of his own grandfather’s cherry orchard. The children use confrontational, adult vocabulary to describe their experiences of war. A young boy earnestly goes through a number of battle strategies, and a girl provides a vivid account of a rocket attack.
Also Directed by Clare Langan
This poetic interpretation of the familiar is seen through the lens as a vast uncompromising force of nature taking it to a place in the viewer’s mind beyond reality. It is a film which explores time, highlighting mankind’s brief fragile existence in the face of the apparently limitless forces of nature.
Clare Langan’s three-screen film installation is a visually sumptuous meditation on the human place in the world. It centres on stunning footage of Skellig Michael soaring starkly from the sea, juxtaposed with views of Dubai, a city of skyscrapers that seems to float on a sea of clouds. And, finally, Montserrat offers views of a world engulfed by sand. A sense of precarious fragility comes through.