OPENS AT FILM FORUM DECEMBER 9, 2020
Directed by Seamus Murphy
Starring PJ Harvey
RT: 90minutes
Press Contact: Abramorama
Stephanie Berlin - stephanie@abramorama.com
SYNOPSIS
As imaginative as the creative process it documents A DOG CALLED MONEY is a uniquely intimate journey through the inspiration, writing and recording of a PJ Harvey record.
Writer and musician Harvey and award-winning photographer Seamus Murphy sought first-hand experiences of the countries she wanted to write about. Harvey accompanied Murphy on some of his worldwide reporting trips, joining him in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC. Harvey collected words, Murphy collected images.
Back home, the words become poems, songs and then an album, which was recorded in an unprecedented art experiment in Somerset House, London. In a specially constructed room behind one-way glass, the public – all cameras surrendered -- are invited to watch the five-week process as a live sound-sculpture. Murphy exclusively documents the experiment with the same forensic vision and private access as their travels.
By capturing the immediacy of their encounters with the people and places they visited, Murphy shows the humanity at the heart of the work, tracing the sources of the songs, their special metamorphosis into recorded music and ultimately cinema.
SHORT SYNOPSIS
Award-winning photographer Seamus Murphy has made a film that investigates the creative process behind his project with PJ Harvey. While tracing the sources of songs and detailing the journey of their birth, he brings to life the people and the places at their very heart.
BIOGRAPHIES
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey is one of the world’s most respected and awarded recording artists. From the outset of her career, she has commanded global attention as an accomplished composer, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, and poet. Harvey has released nine critically acclaimed albums, been nominated for six Grammy Awards, and is the only artist to have received the UK’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize twice. In 2013 she was awarded an MBE for services to music.
Harvey began collaborating with esteemed photojournalist Seamus Murphy in 2011 on her 8th studio album Let England Shake, for which Murphy directed 12 short films. Murphy and Harvey collaborated again, this time traveling to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C., where Harvey collected words and Murphy collected images. The resulting work became Harvey’s 9th studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project; her first collection of poetry accompanied by Murphy’s photographs entitled The Hollow of the Hand; and now Murphy’s feature documentary, A Dog Called Money, which will receive its global premiere at the 2019 edition of the Berlin Film Festival.
Harvey has contributed music to numerous film, TV, and radio projects including: ‘Peaky Blinders Series 2’ starring Cillian Murphy; BBC Radio 4 productions of ‘Eurydice and Orpheus’ by Simon Armitage, and ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ by Linda Marshall Griffiths; 'Basquiat' by Julian Schnabel; The Cradle Will Rock' by Tim Robbins; and most recently Shane Meadows’ forthcoming 4-part drama, The Virtues. She has also scored theatrical productions for Director Ian Rickson, including: The Goat; The Nest; and Electra; and most recently Ivo van Hove’s production of All About Eve, starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James.
Seamus Murphy Director
Photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy has won seven World Press Photo awards for his work in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Peru and Ireland. His work from Afghanistan is in the collections of The Getty Museum, Los Angeles and Imperial War Museum, London. He is the author of four books of his photography. As Director/Camera he has made films for The New Yorker and Channel 4 (UK) and his documentary A Dog Called Money, a meditation on the creative process of musician PJ Harvey, premiered at the Berlinale 2019 and is on release.
Isabel Davis Producer
Isabel David is the Head of Production at Pulse Films having joined the award-winning studio in 2013. With 10 years’ experience in television, documentary and film she has worked with some of the world’s leading broadcasters, working on BAFTA & Emmy winning documentaries as well as flagship BBC strand STORYVILLE. Among some of the projects Davis has overseen the Pulse Films include 2018’s London Film Festival hit RUDEBOY: THE STORY OF TROJAN RECORDS and NO GREATER LAW for A+E Networks which received its premiere at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Davis has produced for Pulse films A DOG CALLED MONEY with PJ Harvey which received its World Premiere at the 2019 Berlinale Film Festival and XY CHELSEA, a feature documentary about historic whistle-blower Chelsea Manning set for 2019.
Katie Holly Producer
Katie Holly is co-owner and Managing Director of Blinder Films, where she has produced several award winning and critically acclaimed features including ONE HUNRED MORNINGS (2009), SENSATION (2010), CITADEL (2012) and THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY (2012) which I screened at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Toronto, London, Rotterdam, Talinn and Sydney. Her most recent projects include GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI, a documentary on the musical and fashion icon, directed by Sophie Fiennes and released in the US by Kino Lorber; VITA & VIRGINA which chronicles the passionate relationship between literary innovator Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, starring Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini and directed by Chanya Button which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2018; original TV drama STRIKING OUT, which now has broadcast on RTE for two seasons. She has also produced Whit Stillman’s LOVE & FRIENDSHIP starring Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel and Stephen Fry which premiered to critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival 2016 , was nominated for a Gotham Award and enjoyed extended releases at both the US (Amazon, Roadside Attractions) and UK (Curzon) box offices and THE QUEEN OF IRELAND, a feature documentary about the accidental LGBT activist Panti Bliss; picked up by Universal Pictures for distribution in the UK and Ireland, THE QUEEN OF IRELAND went on to secure the highest opening box office of any Irish documentary to date.
James Wilson Producer
James Wilson most recently produced Lynne Ramsay’s YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, starring Joaquin Phoenix, which received its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival winning Best Actor and Best Screenplay and is nominated for Best British Film at the BAFTA’s, Best Film, Director, Actor and Editing at the Spirit Awards and won two British Independent Film Awards and was nominated for eight.
About Pulse Films
Pulse Films is an award-winning, independent, modern-day studio encompassing the development, production, financing and distribution of cross-platform content for audiences worldwide. Pulse’s “artist first” mantra has allowed the company to build a thriving talent management component to the business that completes its holistic approach to content creation. Headquartered in London with outposts in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Berlin, Pulse was founded by Thomas Benski and Marisa Clifford in 2005. Dedicated to creating moments of culture through innovative storytelling, Pulse Films operates under the following divisions: Film, Television, Branded Entertainment, Music and Commercials.
About Blinder Films
Founded in 2006, Blinder Films have had their films screened at numerous international festivals including Edinburgh, Settle, Slamdance, Rotterdam, London, Toronto, Palm Springs, SXSW and Sundance. Recent projects include feature documentaries GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI, a documentary on the musical and fashion icon, directed by Sophie Fiennes and released in the US by Kino Lorber; along with A MOTHER BRINGS HER SON TO BE SHOT directed by Sinead O’Shea which has been incredibly successful which has been incredibly successful on the festival circuit, having screened at the BFI London Film Festival, CPH:DOX where it was nominated for the F:ACT award and Watch Doc Film Festival where it won a jury prize; and narrative feature VITA & VIRGINIA which chronicles the passionate relationship between literary innovator Virginia Wolf and Vita Sackville-West, starring Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini and directed by Chanya button which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2018.
About Abramorama
Abramorama is the preeminent global theatrical distribution and rights management partner for documentary and music films and is recognized for the consistent high quality of its work on award winning feature films. An innovator in the focused, personalized form of film marketing, promotion, distribution and live and traditional event cinema, Abramorama provides invaluable alternatives to filmmakers while continuing to trail-blaze exciting new pathways for filmmakers to find their audience.
Over the course of nearly 20 years, Abramorama has successfully distributed and marketed hundreds of films, including Ron Howard’s Grammy Award®-winning The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years; Stanley Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool; Atlantic Records and Melanie Martinez’ K-12; John McDermott’s Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church; Amir Bar-Lev's Long Strange Trip – The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead; Tabbert Fiiller’s The Public Image Is Rotten; Danny Clinch and Pearl Jam’s Let’s Play Two; Corbett Redford and Green Day’s Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk; John Scheinfeld’s Chasing Trane – The John Coltrane Documentary; Roberta Grossman and Nancy Spielberg’s Who Will Write Our History; Brett Bern's BANG! The Bert Berns Story; Brett Morgen and National Geographic’s seminal Jane; Asif Kapadia’s Senna; Neil Young’s vast catalog of Bernard Shakey Productions; Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty; Sacha Gervasi’s Spirit Award-winning Anvil! The Story of Anvil; Banksy’s Academy Award® nominated & Spirit Award-winning Exit Through the Gift Shop; Laurie Anderson’s New York Times critics’ pick, Heart of a Dog; Showtime’s National Board of Review Winner Listen to Me Marlon; Academy Award®- nominee and IDA Best Documentary Winner The Look of Silence; and the episodic multi-platform series Deconstructing The Beatles. Abramorama is a founding partner of The Seventh Art Stand program, an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia, that ran in more than 50 theaters across the United States in May of 2017. Abramorama recently launched a conscious films imprint, Mangurama, alongside its music-centric film fund focused on the global release of iconic music documentaries. In January of 2019 the company launched the live multicast streaming enterprise ABCinemaNOW.com with the global live intro, interstitial programming, and Q&A from Paris, France for the 55-country release of Who Will Write Our History. ABCinemaNOW events are powered by Abramorama’s virtual remote live streaming studio with the collaboration of live streaming event producer Susan Jacobs and director George Barnes. In 2020 Abramorama Selects was launched providing a gateway for select films across global VOD platforms. For more information visit abramorama.com.
