Closing Night: Heart of a Dog
Description
Laurie Anderson’s playful essay film is nominally a tribute to her rat terrier, Lolabelle. In her inimitable way, she takes this canine paean as her center and folds in a world of moving, funny and salient ideas about life, death, love, truth, memory, Buddhism and our four-legged soul mates. Anderson skillfully weaves memories with inspired connections, moving fluidly from a hawk viewed on a Bay Area hike to 9/11, from data-collection to storytelling. Heart of a Dog applies Buddhist wisdom, with a dash of rueful humor, to the film’s profound explorations of loss, entreating us to “feel sad without being sad.” Employing a wide palette of formats—drawings, home movies, animation—layered with original music, Anderson delicately ties it all together with her unique style of voice-over narration. Funny and profound, Heart of a Dog is a distinctive cinematic meditation for dog lovers and other humans.
Laurie Anderson is a New York–based musician, composer and performance artist. Heart of a Dog is her first feature-length film since Home of the Brave (1986). In an artist statement about the film, Anderson said, “Making Heart of a Dog was a way to translate my work into a form I’ve never used this way … The question at the center of Heart of a Dog is: What are stories? How are they made and how are they told?”
Film Details
Language English
Year 2015
Runtime 75
Country USA
Director Laurie Anderson
Producer Dan Janvey, Laurie Anderson
Editor Melody London, Katherine Nolfi
Cinematographer Laurie Anderson, Toshiaki Ozawa, Joshua Zucker Pluda
Music Laurie Anderson
Print Source Abramorama / HBO