The extraordinary life of Brian: Eno in his studio, 1974.
The shapeshifting Eno film is a “generative, cinematic documentary”. You supply the narrative, and popcorn.
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HOW DO YOU make a film about Brian Eno? The self-styled non-musician and mischievous disrupter-producer would seem a fertile subject for cinematic exploration. This is the man, after all, who fed Roxy Music’s art-rock through pioneering electronic effects, helped Bowie, Talking Heads and U2 to think outside the box, and pioneered ambient music in the ’80s and self-generating music in the ’90s. But as the director of MOJO’s Music Film Of The Year points out, there were some major obstacles to securing his involvement in the project. “Brian told me he hates most music films and has no interest in getting nostalgic about his work,” admits Gary Hustwit.
Hooking Eno would be a matter of technological seduction. Generative AI software evolved by Hustwit and Liverpudlian digital artist/coder Brendan Dawes allowed movie scenes to sequence randomly every time the film is played and echoed Eno’s own chance-based creative processes. Different every time you watch it, the film’s jump-cut collision of five decades of audio-visual Eno manifestations build into a rich and revealing portrait of the irrepressible 76-year-old art music magus, all without the need for a word of contextual commentary.