Film Forum

“Only Hipgnosis could shoot a photo of a cow against a blue sky, put it on an (album) cover and make it look like an act of mysterious profundity on a level with the greatest works of Magritte.” – Chris Willman, Variety.  Hipgnosis was the brainchild of famously tetchy graphic designer Storm Thorgerson (1944-2013) and ingenious photographer Aubrey “Po” Powell, a collaboration born of London’s swinging ‘60s scene. Together they created some of the most iconic album covers in rock history (The Dark Side of the Moon, Houses of the Holy, Band on the Run). SQUARING THE CIRCLE — directed by filmmaker/music photographer Anton Corbijn (CONTROL) — immerses us in the audacious visual concepts that were their signature. Featuring dishy interviews with Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the three surviving members of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and more. And yes, the businessman pictured on fire on Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is actually on fire. Pre-photoshop artistry meets global cultural seismic change.

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

2022     101 MIN.     UK     UTOPIA

Reviews

“HIGHLY ENTERTAINING. Makes a convincing case that…Hipgnosis was as responsible as anyone in making visual creativity an iconographic extension of a given rock artist’s image and sound…From the rich tales behind some legendary album art (Wish You Were Here, Houses of the Holy, Animals) to the warts-and-all business saga of a hotshot collective struggling with fraying personalities, industry egos and, eventually, changing times, SQUARING THE CIRCLE is catnip for a music lover of a certain age with a treasured cache.”
– Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“Delightful. Director Anton Corbijn, a famous figure in the album-art in his own right, celebrates his forebears in a doc full of great stories about how music’s greatest design firm arrived at all that unforgettable strange imagery.”
– Chris Willman, Variety

“A highly watchable good time. Corbijn is the perfect person to be telling this story. Dispatches from a time when no detail was unimportant and anything was possible. Even pigs could fly.”
– Christian Blauvelt, IndieWire

“A treat for anyone with a taste for rock, for rock imagery and for the glories that can be found in that piece of cardboard wrapped around a record. Anton Corbijn knows those glories well, so his movie’s got a good beat and a good look.”
– Steve Pond, The Wrap