Video interlude from Sufjan Stevens film THE BQE

Check out this tasty little excerpt from THE BQE – A Film by Sufjan Stevens which sounds grandiose and great. Can’t wait.

First and foremost, The BQE is a self-made home-movie documentation, exhibiting how all the architectural colors of Brooklyn and Queens are fabulously intersected by this ramshackle artery of highway traffic. Shot renegade style on do-it-yourself film cameras, the animated footage of grid-lock crisscrossing the brick and mortar of Brooklyn flickers and cascades Koyaanisqatsi-style on three simultaneous screens. The 16mm cinematography (heroically shot by Reuben Kleiner on a 1960s Bolex) utilizes time-lapse photography, in-camera editing, slow motion, and post-production mirror effects to transform urban blight into a splendor of graphic compositions.

The BQE is also accompanied by an idiosyncratic musical soundtrack (composed by Stevens for band and chamber orchestra), evoking a romanticized musical choreography of perpetual motion vs. gridlock.

Photography by Reuben Kleiner and Sufjan Stevens
Edited by Sufjan Stevens

Pre-order now at Asthmatic Kitty Records: asthmatickitty.com/the-bqe

Interlude I—Dream Sequence in Subi Circumnavigation from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.