Photograph courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
Venezia Lido: 72nd
Film Festival – Laurie Anderson – Heart of a Dog. Heart
of a Dog is a personal essay film that explores themes of love, death and language.
The director’s voice is a constant presence as stories of her dog Lolabelle, her mother, childhood fantasies,
political and philosophical theories unfurl in a seamless song like stream. The visual
language spans animation, eight millimeter films from the artist’s
childhood, layered imagery and high
speed text animation. The director’s
signature music runs throughout the
film in works for solo violin, quartets, songs,
and ambient electronics. The center of Heart of a Dog is
a visual and poetic meditation on the bardo,
the forty nine day period after death in which identity is shredded and the consciousness
prepares to enter another life
form. A Story About A Story envisions her ordeal in the
hospital when she broke her back as a child and how the story became her way to
understand the relationship of real events, authority, and faulty memory on the
creation of stories. Theories on sleep, imagination and disorientation are
framed as questions about time and identity. Is it a pilgrimage? Which way do we go?
Photograph by ASAC - courtesy La Biennale di
Venezia
Red Carpet - Director - Laurie
Anderson - Heart
of a Dog
Director’s Statement. “As an artist I have made music, paintings, installations, sculpture, and theater. But most of all I am a storyteller. Making Heart of a Dog was a way to translate my work into a form I’ve never used in this way. Although I have often used imagery on multiple screens in multi media performances this is the first time I have tried to link stories in a loosely structured narrative film using imagery and animation to complete the sentences. The question at the center of Heart of a Dog is: What are stories? How are they made and how are they told? Throughout I was guided by the spirit of David Foster Wallace whose “every love story is a ghost story” served as my mantra. My guides were also Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard.”
#Venezia72
Laurie Anderson - Heart of a Dog
Contessanally – Divine
Laurie Anderson - emotionally touching – slow and tender – philosophical
story about love and death – unconventional use of mixed media – dedicated to Lou
Reed – cult movie - 8/10
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