Surreal Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos Releases Photo Book Shot on Film

MACK BOOKS

Influential director Yorgos Lanthimos has released a book of film photographs all taken on the set of his recent film Kinds of Kindness.

Titled i shall sing these songs beautifully, the tome is filled with a mix of color and black and white shots taken in Lanthimos’s signature absurdist and surrealist style.

The photos were all shot on location in New Orleans during the making of Lanthimos’s latest film Kinds of Kindness featuring cast members Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, and Hunter Schafer.

Lanthimos makes all of his movies with film cameras so it makes sense he shoots stills on celluloid too. A press release notes that the Greek auteur “relishes the creative intimacy the medium involves.”

Jesse Plemmons

No ordinary behind-the-scenes photo book, i shall sing these songs beautifully doesn’t follow the chronological structure of the film — instead allowing the photographs to become fragments in an entirely new story.

The images are accompanied by short texts written by Lanthimos that are inspired by the Ancient Greek Poet Sappho. Known for her fragmented lyrics designed to be sung to music, one of the texts in the book reads: “he started crying again. she felt nothing. crying had become his natural state. she urged him to cry more. harder. hold nothing back. later that night he died.” The title of the book is also a nod to Sappho.

The book has been released by MACK, a publishing house that also sold Sofia Coppola’s photo book ARCHIVE which moved over 100,000 copies worldwide, according to Deadline.

“If Kinds of Kindness brings together three discretely connected narratives in one film, i shall sing these songs beautifully is a fourth, explored through the framework of the book form,” MACK Books’ founder Michael Mack tells Deadline.

“Unlike most books on cinema, this volume is not a piece of memorabilia predicated on likenesses of the famous cast, referencing recognisable scenes in the form of film stills. Yorgos’ photographs utilize the cast and set locations subtly, drawing upon his distinctive visual language to build an entirely new story which emerges through the particular challenges and limitations of a book sequence.”

i shall sing these songs beautifully is published by MACK.

Image credits: Photographs by Yorgos Lanthimos/MACK BOOKS