Film Forum

PJ Harvey’s 2016 album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, grew out of the English singer/songwriter’s collaboration with acclaimed photojournalist Seamus Murphy, who records their journeys through Kabul, Kosovo, and Washington, DC. The film takes us inside this prodigiously talented artist’s creative process – through the gestation, writing and recording of the Grammy®-nominated album – in an experimental, open-to-the-public studio at London’s Somerset House. Songs like “The Community of Hope,” “The Wheel,” and “The Ministry of Defence” are mini-portraits of impoverished and war-torn communities, be they in the Middle East or in the U.S. The album has been praised as “one of the most powerful protest albums of recent years” (Chicago Tribune) and “radically inventive…folk and blues op-ed journalism” (Rolling Stone).

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund.

IRELAND / UK     2019     90 MINS.     ABRAMORAMA

Reviews

“Among British musicians of the past 30 years, there has been no more urgent or adventurous figure than P.J. Harvey. A protean singer, instrumentalist, composer, poet and sculptor. Her legions of fans will savour her presence in photojournalist Seamus Murphy’s humanist documentary. Music emerges as a liberating Esperanto in the film. Like the great Hungarian combat photographer Robert Capa, Murphy has an unerring eye for poetic compositions. A DOG CALLED MONEY features dynamic montages.”
– Graham Fuller, Sight & Sound

“Revered British alt-rocker Polly Jean Harvey is the elusive subject of A DOG CALLED MONEY, a mongrel mix of music documentary, war-zone travelogue and multimedia art project. A key collaborator on Harvey’s last two albums, Irish photojournalist turned director Seamus Murphy recorded the unorthodox creation of her 2016 opus, The Hope Six Demolition Project. This impressionistic film is his record of their bold shared experiment. (It’s) full of arresting imagery… a freewheeling visual collage. Murphy has a keen eye for visual details… and Harvey has an easy magnetism onscreen, especially… when she shifts register from shy country girl to howling, growling otherworldly siren.”
– Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter