Sophie Fiennes

In Fiennes’ first  short film, Lars from 1 - 10, Danish director Lars Von Trier discusses his Dogme ’95 manifesto and reflects on his creative process. The film premiered at Sundance in 1998.

The Late Michael Clark (1999) combines intimate observational documentary with dance sequences carefully restaged for the camera and shot on 16 mm film. “Somewhere between the relative relaxation of Clarke in front of the camera, "writes the art critic Danny Leigh, “and the film’s Digital-Video derived sense of verité, the results are absorbing, inventive and, more unexpectedly, entirely approachable.”[1]

In 2001, London based arts organization Artangel commissioned Fiennes to document Because I Sing, a choral project involving 19 amateur choirs staged by composer Orlando Gough and Belgian theatre maker Alain Platel. Fiennes forged relationships with these amateur choral groups, capturing their diverse worlds. Described by one critic as “one of the most unusual documentaries about London its inhabitants are likely to see”,[9] Because I Sing was first broadcast on Channel 4 on 27 May 2001.

Fiennes’ first theatrical feature documentary, Hoover Street Revival (2003), uses the sermons of Pentecostal pastor Noel Jones as a form of narration for the life of the local Compton community in Los Angeles, using these to echo the Christian narrative. Writing in The Guardian, Andrew Pluver says: “Fiennes has assembled a collage of footage that pays eloquent testimony to the infectious religiosity that appears to be such a powerful force in an otherwise desperate community.”[12]

Fiennes’ celebrated collaboration with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek began with ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), described by The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw as “a highly entertaining and often brilliant tour of modern cinema, with clips from Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky and Chaplin”.[13] Writing about their collaboration, Žižek says, “When Sophie Fiennes approached me with the idea to do a "pervert's guide" to cinema, our shared goal was to demonstrate how psychoanalytic cinema-criticism is still the best we have, how it can generate insights which compel us to change our entire perspective.”[14] The result is not only an intellectual deep-dive but also, says Bradshaw, “tremendously exhilarating.”[13]

VSPRS Show and Tell (2007) is a document of and about Les Ballet C de la B's performance VSPRS, directed by Alain Platel. This challenging stage work was inspired by the devotional music of Claudio Monteverdi’s Maria Vespers, alongside footage filmed in 1904 of mentally ill in-patients in hospital. One critic described VSPRS as, “full of choreographed hysteria and spasmodic movement”;[15] Fiennes describes it as exploring the problem of humanity – “ this relation between emotion and physicality.”[16] ‘VSPRS Show and Tell’ was filmed using 2 cameras over 7 performances, and maintains a tight, almost claustrophobic frame on the performers as they move from stage to backstage.

Fiennes also traveled with Platel to Palestine to make Ramallah! Ramallah! Ramallah! (2005), a short film about his work with El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe and Ashtar Theatre.

In 2008 the German artist Anselm Kiefer invited Fiennes to document his hill studio estate, Ribotte, in the South of France. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010) bears witness to Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes. Shot in cinemascope, the film constructs visual set pieces alongside observational footage to capture both the dramatic resonance of Kiefer’s art and the intimate process of creation.

Writing in The Sunday Times, Bryan Appelyard describes the film as “a wonder” – able to render Kiefer’s personal universe as a film journey. “Before I saw the film, I knew Kiefer was a great artist,” says Appleyard, “After I saw it, I knew why.”[7] Peter Bradshaw describes it as, “a deeply serious meditation on artistic practice and expression: a discourse in which the artist as creator is respectfully restored to the very centre of the process, and not marginalised by the cross-currents of money, fashion or theory.”[2] Charlotte Higgins writes, “She maps his extraordinary, Wagnerian Gesamkunstwerk – which extends from labyrinthine, sepulchral tunnels dug out of the earth to impossibly tall, tottering concrete towers – with careful, elegant precision. The film has moments of surprising drama – such as when the artist pours molten lead down a mound of earth, or smashes endless sheets of glass on a stone floor. The physicality – sometimes even physical jeopardy – that goes into creating his works of art was something of an eye-opener.”[17] Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow premiered in the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

In 2013 Fiennes documented the London residency of Chinese painter Liu Xiadong, resulting in Liu Xiadong Half Street, exhibited at the Lisson Gallery, London from 27 September to 2 November 2013.

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2013) is Fiennes’ second collaboration with Slavoj Žižek: a “riveting and often hilarious”[18] film in which, “Slavoj Žižek manages to explain some of Lacanian psychoanalysis’s most inscrutable notions with disarming clarity and infectious urgency”.[19] Writing in ArtForum International, J Hoberman says that the collaborations between Fiennes and Žižek represent as well as explain Žižek’s cultural theory: "Žižek’s sense of ideology as spontaneous, even fun, drenches the venerable notion of 'sociological propaganda' with a secret sauce - chef Lacan's objet petit a"[20] Critics have praised Fiennes’ ability to communicate these ideas in an engaging and effective way: “It takes an academic to star in this heady scholastic narrative, but it also takes a fine director to make this movie the all-round cerebral success it thankfully is.”[21]

As a fan of Fiennes’ Hoover Street Revival, Grace Jones, sister of the Pentecostal preacher Noel Jones who features in the 2003 film, invited Fiennes to document her world. After 12 years, Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) premiered in the Toronto International Film Festival.

As much as intimate verité sequences, the film employs Grace Jones’ elaborate masquerades and performances as central to this film portrait. “In a movie about someone who has shown you everything,” writes Wesley Morris in the New York Times, “what you're looking for is something you never expected to see. Bloodlight and Bami delivers.” He describes Fiennes’ approach as responsive and profound: “The documentary is a feat of portraiture and a restoration of humanity. It’s got the uncanny, the sublime, and in many stops a combination of both.”[22]

In 2018 Fiennes collaborated with Stopgap Dance Company and choreographer Lucy Bennett to reimagine the live performance ‘Artificial Things’, staging it in a derelict shopping mall. The film Artificial Things won the IMZ Dance On Screen Award in 2019.

In 2022 Fiennes collaborated with her brother, the actor Ralph Fiennes, translating to the screen his production and performance of T.S Eliot’s poem, Four Quartets. The original on-stage performance was described as “a magnificent theatrical experience”[23] and “a poignant one-man show about a world under threat.”[24] In Sophie Fiennes’ film “the lens and the screen bring a new, even more intimate, perspective”.[25]

British theatre company Cheek By Jowl has shaped dramaturgical practice through ground-breaking productions of classic plays. Currently in post-production, ‘Acting’ is the working title for Fiennes’ process-led observational examination of Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s method of creating theatre.

The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias marks Sophie Fiennes' third collaboration with Slavoj Žižek.[26] The film is a European Co-production with Blinder Films, Ireland and SPOK film, Slovenia and P Guide Ltd. The film is in development and scheduled to shoot in early 2024.