As the DVD/book Someone Else’s Nowhere was coming together, I lit upon another low-budget idea to promote the film online, using footage that ended up cut out of the feature. I hate waste, and I thought Wyatt had shot such beautiful imagery we needed to give it a new life. Cinereach again went with my crazy plan to create a series of collaborative short films with musicians I knew. Inspired by (but not as rigorous as) Lars Von Trier’s ‘The Five Obstructions,’ we gave folders of unused footage to seven different music artists with four guidelines; 1) edit the imagery any way you like, 2) don’t tell the story of The Cold Lands, 3) create an original piece of music or new song (i.e., not a remix), and 4) make the piece available free on the internet and never for sale.
Michael Stipe, Dub Gabriel, Nix Naught Nothing, Tenzin Chopra (as Rockwood Ferry), Mark Mulcahy, Azure Ray and The Echo Friendly delivered seven little gems that were as varied as the artists themselves. Julia Bloch, Luke Thorpe and Andrew Blackwell all helped the musicians with editing. Salon premiered one a week for the seven weeks leading up to the film’s US premiere at BAM.
The Cold Lands collaborations: