All Is Full of Love

United Kingdom, Iceland

1999

4 Min

Color

1.66:1

English

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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PROD DES Julian Caldow, Chris Oddy

MUSIC Björk

Synopsis

“Most video directors have one trick that they use all the time. Then there are people who build a whole world around them. Chris is like that. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with Chris.”

“All is Full of Love” is an elegant, moving description of two Björk robots in love. As they are pieced and wired into existence, they sing to each other and fall in love. The video reaches its harmonious climax as the robots join in embrace while still being detailed by the industrial machines beside them. Each robot was designed by Cunningham, faces reminiscent of Björk’s own delicate features.

“When I first heard the track I wrote down the words ‘sexual,’ ‘milk,’ ‘white porcelain,’ ‘surgery.’ [The video]’s a combination of several fetishes: industrial robotics, female anatomy, and flourescent light in that order.” (Dazed and Confused)

“I think I mentioned that I think it should be … something that’s white and frozen, and then it sort of melts, because of love, and making love.”

The robots were built by Paul Catling, who also sculpted the masks for “Windowlicker,” and mentored Cunningham about model-making. He sculpted the full-sized robots in clay in two hours.

“Every single shot in the video has about four layers. The first element is the shot of the set and the robot prop doing nothing, which we’d film for about 21 seconds. We’d then remove the prop Björk robot and put (the real) Björk in with her face painted white and wearing a blue suit. Using a mix of the (master shot and a live feed of Björk in frame) on the video monitor, we’d then try to match up as much as possible. It was a pretty crude and fairly terrifying method of shooting the video. For the Avid editing, I basically had a series of stills of a robot on a set and some crude shots of Björk wearing a blue suit with her face painted white. There was a definite feeling of insecurity all the way until the first couple of shots were finished in post, when I could finally tell whether it was working or not.” (American Cinematographer)

“[Then] I started … having ideas for ways of making the video better… So we were kind of improvising stuff in post. Up until that point I had absolutely no faith whatsoever in computer graphics, and now I’m more of a convert, really.”

“I guess when you come across someone as special as Chris … you just go humble. And you kind of realize that your role is more to make sure that there is a connection between the tune and the video. And then you set up a space, or like a place where he can work with no interference. And that sort of … ends up being your role.”

See “All is Full of Love” on Björk’s Volumen DVD, Chris’ Directors Label DVD, or its own DVD single (the first ever released in the US for a major artist). –Director-file.com

Director

Chris Cunningham

In 1989, Cunningham worked at Spitting Image, building animatronic robot arms and sculpting caricatures for the TV series. In 1990 he worked on sculpture and animatronics for the film Alien 3.

After seeing Cunningham’s work on the 1994 film version Judge Dredd, Stanley Kubrick head hunted Cunningham to design and supervise animatronic tests of the central robot child character in his version of the film A.I. Cunningham worked for over a year on the film A.I., before leaving to pursue a career as a director.

Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.

Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos… read more

In 1989, Cunningham worked at Spitting Image, building animatronic robot arms and sculpting caricatures for the TV series. In 1990 he worked on sculpture and animatronics for the film Alien 3.

After seeing Cunningham’s work on the 1994 film version Judge Dredd, Stanley Kubrick head hunted Cunningham to design and supervise animatronic tests of the central robot child character in his version of the film A.I. Cunningham worked for over a year on the film A.I., before leaving to pursue a career as a director.

Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.

Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” and “Windowlicker” are perhaps his best known. His video for Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” won multiple awards, including an MTV music video award for Breakthrough Video and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. It was also the first ever music video to win a Gold Pencil at the D&AD Awards. It can still be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His video for Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” was nominated for the “Best Video” award at the Brit Awards 2000. He also directed Madonna’s “Frozen” video.

His video installation Flex was first shown in 2000 at the Royal Academy of Arts, and subsequently at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery and other art galleries. Flex was commissioned by the Anthony d’Offay Gallery for the Apocalypse: Beauty & Horror in Contemporary Art exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal and Max Wigram at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2000.

The Anthony d’Offay Gallery also commissioned Monkey Drummer, a 2 1/2 minute piece intended for exhibition as a companion to Flex at the 2000 Apocalypse exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, however the piece was not finished in time. In it an automaton with nine appendages and the head of a monkey plays the drums to “Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount”, the 10th track on Aphex Twin’s 2001 album drukqs. Monkey Drummer debuted as part of Cunningham’s installation at the 49th International Exhibition of Art at the 2001 Venice Bienalle, which consisted of a loop of Monkey Drummer, Flex, and his video for Björk’s “All Is Full of Love”.

In 2005, Cunningham released the short film Rubber Johnny as a DVD accompanied by a book of photographs and drawings. Rubber Johnny, a six-minute experimental short film cut to a soundtrack by Aphex Twin, remixed by Cunningham was shot between 2001 and 2004. Shot on DV night-vision, it was made in Cunningham’s own time as a home movie of sorts, and took three and half years of weekends to complete. The Telegraph called it “like a Looney Tunes short for a generation raised on video nasties and rave music”.

During this period Cunningham also made another short film for Warp Films, Spectral Musicians, which remains unreleased. The short film was edited to music by Squarepusher, My Fucking Sound, from the album Go Plastic and a piece called Mutilation Colony, which was written especially for the short and was released on the EP Do You Know Squarepusher.

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