Film First and Tigerlily Productions are thrilled to bring Eno, filmmaker Gary Hustwit's (Helvetica/RAMS) groundbreaking generative documentary about visionary musician and artist Brian Eno, to the UK this summer. The film will be different with each screening. Opening on Friday 12th July, the film will be screened in Picturehouse Cinemas nationwide, with a different version of the film hitting the screens each day.
Brian Eno has been at the forefront of musical creativity, technology and artistic innovation for the past 50 years. The highly influential British musician, producer, activist, visual artist and self-described “sonic landscaper” began his career in the early 1970s as an original member of the legendary band Roxy Music. Since then, Eno has released over 40 solo and collaborative records and pioneered the ambient music genre with his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports.” As a producer, he has helped define and reinvent the sounds of some of music's most important artists, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads and Coldplay. He also composed perhaps the most listened-to song in the world, the startup sound for Microsoft Windows. There's no denying that Eno changed the way modern music is made.
Enriched with hundreds of hours of unseen footage and unreleased music, Gary Hustwit's documentary utilizes groundbreaking technology to achieve an unprecedented feat: a feature film that is different with every screening. Hustwit and UK-based creative technologist Brendan Dawes developed bespoke generative software to sequence scenes and create transitions from Hustwit's original interviews with Eno, and from a rich archive of hundreds of hours of unseen footage and unreleased music. Every screening of Eno is different, presenting different scenes, sequences and music, and is meant to be experienced live. Eno's generative, infinitely iterative nature resonates poetically with the artist's own creative practice, how he composes music using technology, and his endless, deep exploration of the mutable nature of creativity.
A UK-US co-production, the film marks the beginning of Hustwit and Eno's collaboration, dating back to 2017, when Eno composed the original music for Hustwit's film Rams, about German designer Dieter Rams. Hustwit said: “Much of Brian's career has been devoted to nurturing his own and others' creativity, not only through his role as producer, but also through our collaborations on projects such as Oblique Strategies Cards and the music app Bloom. I see Eno as an art film about creativity. It draws on the fruits of Brian's 50-year career. What I'm trying to do is create a cinematic experience that is as innovative as Brian's approach to music and art.”