Film Forum

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 (HELVETICA, RAMS) 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). Film Forum is presenting a unique version of the film each day during its exclusive New York engagement; these versions will never be shown again.

The film has wowed audiences, with some moviegoers returning five, six, or even 12 times to see how the film changes each day. On September 15, in its third month on screen, Hustwit debuted the next evolution of the film, Generation 4, which features new unreleased footage and software functions. Says Hustwit: “It’s exciting that we can continue to evolve the film over time, to incorporate more of Brian’s ideas and music. The film and the storytelling structure itself can continually grow, which is only possible with this generative film approach."

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

2024     APPROX. 85 MIN.     USA     FILM FIRST

Reviews

CRITIC’S PICK. “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…[Brian] 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

“DAZZLING. More than a biographical documentary, ENO emerges as a brilliant and endlessly inspiring creative manifesto. Eno is an enthralling subject, whose way of talking about art and artmaking is as lucid as it is stimulating. And with its inventive generative gambit formally echoing the very tenets Eno has nurtured in his art for decades, Hustwit’s film boldly paves the way for a decidedly new kind of cinema—one that proves as soothing and as stirring as Eno’s own work.”
– Manuel Betancourt, The A/V Club

“GROUNDBREAKING. Remixes the music doc.”
– David Fear, Rolling Stone

“A template for how cinema can be re-defined in the digital age.”
– Daniel Dylan Wray, The Quietus

“A documentary that mirrors the spirit of Eno’s music in its very form. ENO is sleek, seamless, and compelling… The documentary uses [Eno’s] observations to fuse his past and present, his evolving images and shifting roles, in a way that accentuates their musical and spiritual continuity…There has long been an aura of enigma surrounding Brian Eno, and one of the film’s delights is that he turns out to be a brainy but also quite funny and grounded middle-class British chap who has great stories to tell.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“A perfect blend of form and content…It may be simply called ENO but there’s nothing simple about Gary Hustwit’s experimental film, a documentary that generates itself anew every time it screens… Brian Eno is a genius who was unencumbered by traditional music production. Why make a traditional documentary about him?”
– Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

“A clever documentary shaped by [Eno’s] own innovations… The one constant—and what makes the movie worth seeing—is the man himself. Charming, smart, sensitive, genial, and exuding an almost childlike passion for and profound (though never pretentious) questioning of the musical art-form, Eno makes for great company.”
– Anthony Kaufman, Screen Daily