Bodysong

The intention was to outline the human beings and there life on earth in no more then 90 minutes using tons of documentation footage from all over the world and all over the last century. It starts with a library of video recordings of sperm that has been magnified. The film starts on a collection of old recording from all over the globe and period that takes you on a journey of all of mankind's life, having a baby, learning, getting a job, sex, fighting, conflict, religion, imagination and demise.

Some of the clips are dull and others are mesmerizing, the prime impression is one of being carried along. The film somes up the word sublime for me. It The film is put together well to create the themes to create a universal feeling of what it is to be alive. It does not specific of individuals as such like my final film might. The shows me the idea of what being human is, This has really helped me as I want to show what it is like to live in the town of Eastleigh for my own film. The film is really interesting as all the material has been directed and filmed by others.

I saw this film at the world premiere in Rotterdam, 3 weeks ago. I didn't know what I was going to see. The only thing I knew was the music was composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. According to the title I thought the film was going to be like an ode to the human body, or something...

It was far from that; a better discription for this film would be: an experimental summary of all the bright and dark sides of life that every human being will encounter during his or her existence... Beautiful and moving it is. This film feels as a strong, videoclip-like story, not as an documentary. Though, the whole film consists completely of archive footage. Every piece of footage of every highlight in the history was used to accomplish a stunning effect. (The director of this film told us, before the film was started, every shot has a story and every story can be found on their interactive website.)This was all superbly guided by a score that, in my opion, sounded very fresh and modern and it harmonized wholly with the visuals as its counterpart.

'Bodysong' is a most unusual film, a collection of moving images of the human body set to music. The film demonstrates all stages of life, and includes some very explicit sexual content. In a loose way, it reminded me of Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker', in that one image follows another with some linkage, but no overall narrative in the classical sense. It's very artfully done, and almost every fragment is visually striking; but for those of us who think in words, it's just a set of pictures, distinctive but slightly lacking in purpose beyond a series of things to look at. In its own way, it's very good; but not quite my thing.

The premise of this film is certainly worthy. It's a collage of film archive documentary footage which depicts the complete range of humanity and human experience, starting with birth and going on through various themes (love, war and the like), set to an interesting soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood (the music is in fact by far the best bit).

I expect some people thought this film was wonderful, and I came to it well-disposed myself, but ended up thinking otherwise. Sorry to sound cynical, but given a half-decent film archive, a pair of scissors, a roll of sticky tape and a few days, I could have done quite a bit better myself.

It became apparent after a while that almost all of the footage dated from the 70s or earlier, and it certainly showed. Crackly, poor colour, etc. And it was pretty second-rate footage too.

Lots of shots not particularly well filmed, ranging from the uninteresting to the mildly interesting. The themes were worthy (that word again) enough - people being happy, people being sad, people being shot at, etc. But with a handful of exceptions, you just wouldn't have chosen this particular footage to illustrate the themes. Rather than being inspired by the images, I ended up feeling that I was supposed to be inspired by them, but they just weren't very good.

I couldn't help wondering: given the vast scope of this film - potentially depicting all and any aspect of humanity and human endeavour - was this the best that could be found? Given the billions of hours of film that have ever been shot, was this really the top 83 minutes of all?

I'm afraid not. No moon landings, Beatles, Hiroshimas or other spectacular or memorable imagery here. Working down from the top of the pile of all footage ever taken, you'd find this stuff somewhere in the bottom half - not quite cutting-room floor or home video stuff, but not choice material either. Kind of old, mediocre stuff.

I assume the constraint here was budget. Presumably what happened is that the film-makers paid to use whatever they could find in a cheap archive of old footage. You get what you pay for.

And what you got was basically a load of crackly second-rate old footage on worthy themes cobbled together. Sorry to sound cynical, but that's all this film was.

Incidentally the opening few minutes, which includes (literally) about 30 different slow-motion graphic sequences of childbirth (all also apparently dating from the 1970s), are fairly gross and I'm surprised no-one in the cinema passed out or at least walked out during this.

However, as time wore on various people did get up and leave, and in the end I joined them.

The documentary genre is renowned for its creative filmic style and original brilliance the creators of said films bring to the screen. In the case of BODYSONG writer/director Simon Pummell in his debut feature is left to delve deep into the realms of his mind where anything and everything is possible. Pummell brings his ferociously honest film to life via the avenue of Jonny Greenwood, from the band 'Radiohead', with his immense musical genius creating a score worthy of the greatest motion picture.

The addresses the common truths throughout all society and more importantly the human race as the name suggests BODY being the overriding theme of the feature. All aspects of life are addressed and recorded vividly with no image censored leaving the spectator with a true sense of wonder and horror about the characteristics of the species depicted on screen. The shear volume of information and constant moving images of 'us' becomes a wanted tedium. Repetition seems to have no grounds when up against some of the most beautiful events that can ever occur for example the explicitly shown growing and birth of a human child and the resultant joy of the given parents. Only the most hardened soul could create disgust when viewing such magnificent beauty. One is truly in love with the idea of the human race and thus finds oneself deeply devoted to such a picture. Common curiosity is above all the true reason for placing yourself into the realms of Pummells' mind. This curiosity is convulsed with images that at the same time will deeply sicken most but also when realised as an entirety or as a 'human' they become less horrifying and more of a pragmatically true representation of the human species as we knew and know it. With all metaphorically decorative elements removed this film is showing you nothing more than human life, love, sex, death but in a way which truly mesmerises the soul. Whilst showing the spectator the standard characteristics of the human species Pummell chooses to show feats of human brilliance from the ignition of paper with pure mental strength to the hilariously exquisite contorting gymnastics of a man and his dog. Everything amazes solely because of the blatant and uncensored truth that is filmed. One cannot find in him a reason to criticise this feature due to its pure brilliance from the filmic techniques to the excellent score but more criticisms of the human race. You may find yourself in total emotional disarray that one human can do such things to another, but the film is 'us' and if we are like this then we must not blame the film for its grotesque frankness. More importantly blame us for giving Pummell the resources and the imagery to work with when creating the picture. The character in this film is humans not one but all and the people playing the species do it with realism and fortitude. Actors unconsciously playing a role that are generic to them, i.e. humans doing what they do best, being human. All the characters in the film have a story they are real people and what makes BODYSONG so unique is that an Internet database was created alongside the film with the background of all the people shown in the feature. One is left with only a few words to persuade others to watch BODYSONG them being, IF YOU ARE HUMAN WATCH THIS FILM.