Sam Taylor-Johnson
A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.
At a pivotal moment for gender equality in Hollywood, successful women directors tell the stories of their art, lives and careers. Having endured a long history of systemic discrimination, women filmmakers may be getting the first glimpse of a future that values their voices equally.
A provocative and rare glimpse at the most iconic luxury jeweler in the world. From past to present, discovering the behind the scenes creation to those beholden to its charm, Tiffany & Co. is unveiled like never before.
Explores the hot-button issues around the striking gender gap in Hollywood. Both women and men in the entertainment industry share first-person insights, questions, and anecdotes about the place of women in Hollywood.
When college senior Anastasia Steele steps in for her sick roommate to interview prominent businessman Christian Grey for their campus paper, little does she realize the path her life will take. Christian, as enigmatic as he is rich and powerful, finds himself strangely drawn to Ana, and she to him. Though sexually inexperienced, Ana plunges headlong into an affair -- and learns that Christian's true sexual proclivities push the boundaries of pain and pleasure.
This short film is made by 'We Are Equals' to celebrate International Women's Day. James Bond video for international women's day shows 007's feminine side. Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench team up for two-minute film highlighting the need for gender equality. 007 star Daniel Craig undergo a dramatic makeover as he puts himself, quite literally, in a woman's shoes.
The drama tells the story of Lennon's teenage years and the start of his journey to becoming a successful musician. The story also examines the impact on his early life and personality of the two dominant females in his childhood
Three Minute Round depicts the Klitschko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, in the moments after defeating their rivals in separate championship boxing matches in Las Vegas and Berlin in 2008. Sam Taylor-Johnson isolated the world-famous Ukrainian boxers, known for their brute strength, speed and athleticism, in their dressing rooms immediately after each fight. She asked them to sit idly while she videoed their still bodies for 3 minutes. The brothers breathe rhythmically and slowly, in an almost meditative state, and we see them away from their public persona as all-conquering fighters. The vulnerability and humanity of the Klitschko brothers is allowed to come through in a way that echoes the depiction of another famous athlete by Taylor-Johnson, David Beckham. Dual screen projection.
Sigh was made in collaboration with the BBC Concert Orchestra and features a score made especially for it by Academy-Award winning composer Anne Dudley. Dudley comments, 'When I was composing this piece I had in mind Sam's wonderful large photographs from her series Wuthering Heights. This gave me the sense of loss that would transform onto the members of the orchestra as they played without their instruments. I knew that the sound of each section had to come from the right screen and this allowed me to think about the music travelling around the room. Also, I wanted the listener to be able to move around the room and experience a different perspective of sound – very much like strolling through an orchestra. All the sections rely on each other to complete the soundscape and avoid a greater loss.' Eight-screen projection.
Two teenagers are drawn together by the Buzzcocks' single 'Love You More' during the summer of 1978.
The figures in this piece are the fashion designer Bella Freud, daughter of Lucian and granddaughter of Sigmund, and her husband, the writer James Fox. Fox has written about Taylor-Johnson's work on more than one occasion. Single-screen projection.
Sam Taylor-Wood says she can't believe the silly questions that people keep asking about her latest work, presented in the Ukrainian pavilion. That White Rush is a video of a young woman lying naked with a white swan decomposing on top of her; her toe twitches as the swan's internal liquids spew out. It is made up of two seamlessly integrated films, one taken of the girl over four minutes and one of the swan over four weeks. "People actually ask me if the girl lay there for four weeks," says Taylor-Wood.
In her film The Last Century (2006), what appears to be a static image of a group of people slowly reveals itself to be a real, filmed take, timed to the length of a burning cigarette: the film is entirely static apart from the involuntary blinking, twitching and barely-visible breathing of four motionless actors, all arranged around a central figure as if in a group portrait painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio.
A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality.
The graceful, ephemeral longing highlighted in this work is brought back down to earth with the title – after Van Halen's Jump. Single-screen projection.
A string quartet, dressed in black tie, seated in an arc that curves away from the viewer, play part of Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 2 in F major Op. 22. The piece is titled Andante ma non Tanto (which, crudely translated, means faster, but not too much). They sit in the sumptuous surroundings of the Crush Room at the Royal Opera House, London. Above them suspended by wires, which flick in and out of view as the light catches them, is a ballet dancer. He is naked apart from shorts and the harness. The dancer rests just above the musicians' heads as they play Tchaikovsky's melancholic piece. The dancer moves rhythmically and slowly, his feet almost brushing their bows as they play. 35mm film. Single-screen projection.
Taylor-Johnson updates traditional still life imagery. What seems at first to be a quiet arrangement of a dead hare and peach on a table starts to decompose before our eyes. Rather than attempting to capture a moment in time, the viewer is put face to face with a speeded up decomposition of the subject matter. Taylor-Wood brings home the transience of biological life, and the viewer's mortality. This work explores the issue of temporality, an idea which permeates the artist's oeuvre, where a course of action can change radically even within the space of a few seconds.
2002 Sam Taylor-Wood short video art piece featuring a man playing an imaginary string instrument.
Reminiscent of Warhol, Breach depicts a girl in ever-heightening grief, but with the sound of her tears removed. The person inflicting her agony is also unheard and unseen, but has a tangible presence in the film. As emotion is taken out of context, the viewer is almost placed in the position of the aggressor. The tangible melts into the intangible and the other way around.
As Harold Pinter famously said, Taylor-Johnson is 'the weasel under the cocktail cabinet' at this particular party. The erotic undercurrents between the various people at the party are given further resonance with the use of multiple screens to portray them. Marianne Faithfull is given a starring role, and the viewer is the 'third party' of the title. 16mm film. Seven-screen projection.
The title of this piece is the well-known warning of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection. It translates to Touch me not. This biblical scene gave birth to a strong iconographical tradition in Christian art, from late antiquity to present. Here, the denial of hope and redemption is removed from its religious context. 16mm film. Dual-screen projection.
In Sam Taylor-Johnson's words, 'I wanted (Atlantic) to feel like you could be coming in, as you say, at any point, not necessarily at the beginning, or the end, but somewhere towards the middle where something is about to happen. It could be the beginning of an argument or an argument petering out … the only thing those people have in common is the space they occupy. They are totally isolated within their own activity or mental space … you are looking at two people interacting but you project what the discussion or argument is about. The viewer is put in the position of the people in the restaurant who are onlookers. And as an onlooker you're straining to understand what exactly is taking place. I want people to construct their own narrative, so they're looking at it and giving it endless possibilities.' 16mm film. Three-screen projection.
The Swedish actress Amanda Ooms, who appeared in several of Taylor-Johnson's early works, is here juxtaposed with a man who is filmed separately. When installed, the double screens of this piece placed the viewer in between the tensions of these two people. 16mm film. Dual-screen projection.
The white glare of Knackered, where the voice of a castrati is also used, is here replaced with a decadent red velvet backdrop. Kylie Minogue embodies the voice instead of an anonymous woman. But the vulnerability is the same, if shaped differently. 16mm film. Single-screen projection.
A 10 minute film that depicts a man and a woman having an argument. This domestic drama is enacted simultaneously on two separate projected screens—the man’s space is described by a chair standing against a blank wall, the woman’s by a fridge and a fragment of kitchen sideboard. Each participant is isolated within his and her own screen, the borders from one to the other being crossed by thrown objects such as a glass of milk or a frying pan and, occasionally, by one of the participants, who, unable to contain their rage, launches an attack across the divide. A soundtrack of tuning into a series of different radio stations accompanies the film, seeming to articulate the switching emotional tenor of the scenario as it moves through confusion, anger, sadness and resignation.
Informed by cinematic and documentary traditions, Taylor-Johnson has been working with photography, film and video in London since the early 1990s. She presents characters in situations of isolation and self-absorption, their familiar, even mundane, surroundings and poses belying more or less hidden states of emotional crisis. This piece explores the difficult distinctions 'between reality and unreality, life and theatre', public and private, by putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether the action is genuine or staged. This discomfort persists with Brontosaurus, which is clearly taking place in a private space.
As four people lip-synch to the grand, passionate sounds of the Richard Strauss opera Elektra, the contrast between the banality of modern life and the primal desires that swirl beneath the surface is heightened. Four-screen projection. Video.
