''Bodysong'' is a 2003 BAFTA-winning documentary about human life and the

human condition The human condition is all of the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed f ...

directed by Simon Pummell and produced by

Janine Marmot Janine Marmot is a British film producer and founder of Hot Property Films. She is best known for the BAFTA-winning documentary Bodysong and the relationship drama Kelly + Victor, which won the Outstanding British Debut BAFTA award in 2014. Her ...

Synopsis

The film tells the story of an archetypal human life using images taken from all around the world and the last 100 years of cinema. The images span the microcosm (inside the body), through the individual (the first cry of a new-born baby), to the macrocosm (accumulated archive footage of ritual celebration and the carnage of war). The editing, music, and the mythic narrative arc of the material is designed to take the viewer on a roller coaster tour of the human body and life cycle. Every possible depiction of the human life from microscopic medical to portraits and newsreels, from births to deaths, are cut to a music track by

Jonny Greenwood Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood (born 5 November 1971) is an English musician and composer. He is the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead, and has written numerous film scores. Along with his elder brother, t ...

Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass ...

to create a mythic narrative of the arc of a single life. Hollywood director

Paul Thomas Anderson Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. He made his feature-film debut with '' Hard Eight'' (1996). He found critical and commercial success with ''Boogie Nights'' (1997) and received ...

saw the film at its Rotterdam Festival premiere: "I remember seeing ''Bodysong'' and feeling like I was in a trance. A wonderful collection of the two simple things a film has to work with: pictures and music. It's a moving, scary and hypnotic potpourri of images and an experience that gets more lucid the more you watch ...The website, which is 50% of the experience is a testament to the strong, caring research and a dedication to wonderful material."

Release

The film was released by

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipment ...

in 2003 with a limited collector's edition released on DVD by the

BFI The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

in 2010, which included original essays by

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, hi ...

Geoff Andrew Geoff Andrew (born 1954) is a British writer and lecturer on film, and Programmer-at-large at BFI South Bank. After gaining a First in Classics at King's College, Cambridge, he was for some years programmer at London's Electric Cinema in Notting ...

, Gareth Evans and

Matt Hanson Matt Hanson (born 17 September 1971) is an author, film producer, and film director, specializing in digital art. He has created a series of projects which investigate cinema's possible futures, including ''A Swarm of Angels'', ''onedotzero'', ...

Awards

The film won a BAFTA Interactive Award in 2004 and Best British Documentary at the

British Independent Film Award The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) is an organisation that celebrates, supports and promotes British independent cinema and filmmaking talent in United Kingdom. Nominations for the annual awards ceremony are announced in early November, ...

in 2003.

References

External links

* * * 2003 films 2003 documentary films British documentary films British avant-garde and experimental films Film4 Productions films Films without speech Non-narrative films Films scored by Jonny Greenwood 2000s avant-garde and experimental films Collage film 2000s British films {{2000s-UK-film-stub