Closing Night: Heart of a Dog
Laurie Anderson’s playful essay film is nominally a tribute to her rat terrier, Lolabelle. In her inimitable way, Anderson 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. Skillfully weaving personal memories with inspired connections to current events and philosophy, Anderson creates a funny and moving meditation for dog lovers and other humans.
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.
Biographies
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?”