ENO

Maverick recording artist Brian Eno co-founded Roxy Music, produced breakthrough albums for David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, and U2, and pioneered innovative work in ambient music. A renowned explorer of technology and “oblique strategies,” he is an unlikely subject for a conventional documentary; but in this first-of-its-kind portrait, Gary Hustwit applies Eno’s own concept of “generative” art: the filmmaker’s proprietary technology, developed with digital artist Brendan Dawes, produces a different movie every time it’s screened, presenting variations in sequence, music, and scenes (including some with such collaborators as Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, David Bowie, U2, and others). The version that screens at Beacon Cinema will never screen again!

Defying the hagiographic impulses of the music doc genre, ENO draws from original interviews and the artist’s own staggering archive of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music.

“There’s a pure joy to this documentary, a sense that creativity is miraculous and we ought to be grateful that we get to participate in it. Eno, one of the most innovative and celebrated musicians and producers of his generation, has fiddled with randomness in his musical practice for decades, often propelled along by new technologies. The generative framework makes perfect sense for ENO, a documentary about a man who’s spent his career rewriting the rules of the possible — not just finding a new way to say something, but changing the act of saying itself.” – Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times