The movie that's different every time you watch it

Summary

English musician Brian Eno is one of the most innovative and influential figures in popular music today. After starting out his career as the synthesizer player for the band Roxy Music in the early 1970s, Eno has since become known for his experimental work as a solo artist that has helped give rise to the genres of electronica and ambient music. He has also produced albums for many of the world's most successful musical artists, including David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and Coldplay. Given Eno's unconventional and heavily tech-based approach to composing, producing, and performing music, it should come as no surprise that a recent documentary about him is itself an experimental work that utilizes groundbreaking technology. Directed by Gary Hustwit, Eno (2024) was made using generative software that randomly selects snippets of Hustwit's interviews with Eno and archival footage every time the film is screened. As a result, no single viewing of the film is the same, creating a new and unique cinematic experience that the filmmakers hope will inspire future filmmakers. Billions of Movies in One In an interview with The Verge, Hustwit explained that Eno was born out of his desire to make "a generative film" whose contents could vary with each new screening. Hustwin described this new type of film as a natural step in the evolution of filmmaking as it transitions from physical film to digital:"...it doesn’t ever have to be finished. We can keep adding things to it and increasing the variety and seeing what the juxtapositions are and just keep evolving it." He decided that Brian Eno, who composed the soundtrack for Hustwit's 2018 documentary Rams, would be "the perfect subject for this approach" because of his own history of generative experimentation during his avant-garde musical career. Despite Eno's long-time aversion to being the subject of a documentary, he agreed to Hustwit's project after being shown a demo of the generative software that would be ...