British filmmaker Sally Potter has set plans to re-release her 2009 feature Rage, starring Riz Ahmed, Lily Cole, Jude Law, and Judi Dench, as a series of posts on Instagram, to mark the film’s 15th anniversary.
Potter has said the movie will unravel over several “real-time” posts across seven days, starting February 23.
The film also stars Patrick J Adams, Jacob Cedergren, John Leguizamo, Eddie Izzard, David Oyelowo, Dianne Wiest, Steve Buscemi, Adriana Barraza, Simon Abkarian and Bob Balaban. The original concept in 2009 was for the film to be watched on smartphones. The synopsis reads: Michelangelo, an unseen schoolboy armed only with a mobile phone, goes behind the scenes at a New York fashion show for seven days in which an accident on the catwalk turns into a murder investigation, and his interviews with key players become a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis.
The story unfolds shot by shot, over the week in which Michelangelo shoots and posts his interviews. The film was shot as a series of to-camera monologues. These will be released in sequence across the 7 days, with each shot as a new Instagram post, posted throughout the day. The production believes this will be the first feature film released on Instagram.
“Rage is an exploration of the burgeoning power of social media and the generational divide between those born into a digital world and fluent with its rapidly evolving forms, and those for whom it remains a dark, opaque art,” Potter said.
“The setting – the competitive, narcissistic, and economically unstable world of fashion with its hangers-on, critics, models, dressers, seamstresses, and publicists – is an atmosphere made chaotic by the feeding frenzy of celebrity. But it is also a world in which, despite appearances to the contrary, each individual grapples with insecurity and private terror.”
On Thursday, February 29, when the Instagram release is completed, there will be a Q&A with Sally Potter and the cast streamed live on Instagram from the Rio Cinema in Hackney. Rage is written and directed by Sally Potter and produced by Christopher Sheppard and Andrew Fierberg for Adventure Pictures.
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