|
During a 2004 shoot for Vanity Fair, Nick Knight created a number of on-set scenarios for intriguing
visual and aural actions for subject Brad Pitt to perform, so as to engage the actor in 'pique'
performance. 'Freedom of Love' is a short film which captures Pitt in action during the shoot,
energetically painting onto a huge blow up of his own face, and adding caption, and contemplatively
reading surrealist poetry. Pitt reads from André Breton's poem 'Freedom of Love', a one stanza,
sixty-line homage to his wife. The poem cites a beautiful litany of comparisons for her physical
attributes, deftly playing with language that eludes any commonplace romantic imaging, instead
presenting uncanny metaphors. Breton was the provocative, passionate leader of the avant-garde
literary and artistic movement Surrealism, who believed in 'revolution of the mind', and in the
'marvellous' - dazzling combinations of words or visual images, spontaneously created by automatic
processes of the mind.
Project credits:
Narration: Brad Pitt
Direction & Film: Nick Knight
Motion Image Design and Edit: Adam Mufti
Production: Stardust Visions
Set Design: Bill Doig
Styling: Alister Mackie
Special thanks to Isabella Blow & Cindy Guagenti
|