 |
The Work of Director Chris Cunningham Chris Cunnigham shot to fame after directing the darkly humorous Come To Daddy promo for Aphex Twin in 1997. It featured an old lady walking her dog around a British council estate being terrorised by a bunch of kids, all featuring the distinctive grinning face of Aphex Twin's Richard James. A television gives birth to a tall, nightmarish, version of Aphex Twin, his face distorted into a long scream blasting the old lady only inches from her face.
Not your average promotional video, then.
Cunningham went on to direct visually stunning videos for Portishead, Madonna, Björk, Leftfield and Aphex Twin again, each one cementing his position as a unique visionary, able to extract the perfect cinematic counterpoint to the music.
At one point, he was connected to the movie version of William Gibson's Neuromancer, but that looks unlikely to happen now. These days, he doesn't make so many promo videos, and instead concentrates on directing commercials for the likes of Nissan and Sony, as well as collaborating with Warp and Aphex Twin to make short films.
If making adverts sounds like a sell-out, then you'd be mistaken, as his spots have developed and expanded his slightly twisted take on the world around him. Take, for example, the deceptively simple Mental Wealth commercial for Sony PlayStation, featuring the distorted features of Fi-Fi, a Scottish lass, telling us to land on our own Moon.
While some of Cunningham's work has been available on compilations such as Aphex Twin's Come To Viddy, we've never been able to enjoy an overview of his work until now. Palm Pictures have collaborated with groundbreaking directors Cunningham, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze to create Directors Label, a series of DVDs featuring the work of each director. "Michel and I have been talking about this forever," Jonze said on their press release. "A couple of years ago we talked to Chris, which got us motivated. I'm so excited we're finally getting it together."
The resulting DVDs are amazing, and include documentaries, interviews and well-illustrated booklets.
Cunningham's DVD pulls together a handful of his videos, such as Come To Daddy and its twisted Los Angeles cousin, Windowlicker, and the futuristic, beautiful kissing robots of Björk's All Is Full Of Love. Also included are the Nissan and PlayStation ads and a collection of short movies. Monkey Drummer, a video installation using Aphex Twin's frenetic Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michael's Mount and features a toy monkey with human arms playing all the drums in this highly percussive track. It's extremely funny, especially when the Monkey plays a hi-hat with a penis drum stick.
The DVD also includes an excerpt from Flex, another collaboration with Aphex Twin (although reading the enclosed interview, it appears the audio was cobbled together from old Aphex Twin tracks and music by Cunningham as Richard James didn't finish enough new stuff in time.) The result is an abstract piece full of darkness, muscle, blood and water as a man and woman wrestle it out in a surreal empty void. Beautiful and mysterious, it has undercurrents of David Lynch.
Perhaps the most illuminating aspects of the DVD are the interviews, where it shows a director uncertain of his own abilities, such as having a panic attack while creating All Is Full Of Love for Björk, worried his idea wouldn't work. But he needn't have concerned himself. The videos demonstrate a prodigious talent that's really in no doubt at all.
I don't know who else is planned for the Directors Label, but personally I'd like to see the shorts, videos and ads of David Lynch (his "The Third Place" ad for the PlayStation 2 is pure genius) and Mark Romanek (if you've not seen his video for Johnny Cash's Hurt, then you really haven't lived!). Fingers crossed.
Cunningham's DVD on the Directors Label is absolute must buy for anyone who has a passion for the darker places that music and video go and eye-popping creativity. Get it for your DVD collection now.
|
