New Velvet Underground Film Released
The eagerly awaited film by Todd Haynes, The Velvet Underground, will be in theatres and available to watch on Apple TV from tomorrow. The documentary will offer viewers an alternative perspective to other music documentaries, with Haynes intending the film to provide viewers with a new experience, akin to being in the room with the band or attending a live performance.
'My job as a filmmaker is to try to bring the medium of film to open up the visual language of a movie to a band and their music.' - Todd Haynes
Using rare archival footage, the documentary will reveal the group's history, and new interviews from surviving members and other 'key players' from the band's golden era will build on the narrative. As the frontman, Lou Reed is set to be a main point of focus within the documentary, described by Haynes as someone with 'such extraordinary wit and clarity and drive.'
After the Velvet Underground's demise at the beginning of the Seventies, Lou Reed would go on to make one of the greatest albums of all time, Transformer. Produced by David Bowie and arranged by Mick Ronson, Transformer would finally bring Reed mainstream recognition and, soon after, bring the Velvet Underground delayed success.
Genesis was honoured to have worked with Lou Reed on his limited edition book,
Transformer, where Reed and photographer Mick Rock discuss the era and their friendship in an original, no-holds-barred dialogue. The authors recall walking 60 blocks of New York in the snow, the 'TV tour', staying awake for nights on end creating visuals and discussing poetry, alongside Reed's choice of photographs, from the famous to the never-before-seen. From the book, Lou Reed and Mick Rock then went on to select rare and unseen photographs to create a series of signed and stamped fine art prints.
