Squaring The Circle (The Story Of Hipgnosis) - An Anton Corbijn Film will open on Wednesday, June 7 in New York at Film Forum, and Friday, June 16 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal. A nationwide expansion will follow starting June 20.
Director Anton Corbijn and subject/Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey "Po" Powell will be in-person at Film Forum for Q&As June 7-9.
The film features Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Peter Gabriel, Graham Gouldman, Peter Saville, and Noel Gallagher.
Synopsis: Celebrated photographer, creative director and filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s first feature documentary Squaring The Circle (The Story Of Hipgnosis) tells the story of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio, Hipgnosis, responsible for some of the most recognizable album covers of all time. They formed Hipgnosis in Cambridge during the ferment of the sixties and became rock royalty during the boom time of the seventies. They conjured into existence sights that no one had previously thought possible, produced visuals which popularized music that had previously been considered fringe, and were at the white-hot center of the maddest, funniest and most creative era in the history of popular music.
During this period, record companies didn’t dictate to acts like Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney what their LP covers should look like - Storm and Po did. They made money; they lost money. They did great things; they did silly things. They fell out bitterly; they made up. They never played a note, but they changed music. The film features brand new interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour & Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, Jimmy Page & Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Graham Gouldman of 10cc, Noel Gallagher, and many more.
Watch a new trailer below:
A polymath in photography, music videos, feature films, graphic design and commercials, Dutchman Anton Corbijn is perhaps best known for immortalizing some of the greatest artists of our time. His iconic portraits of musicians, directors and artists like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, the Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese, Naomi Campbell, Clint Eastwood, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, Marlene Dumas amongst others, are praised for the way they capture the soul and charisma of his subjects. Effortlessly moving in the early 80s from photography into music videos Corbijn has since made approximately 80 promos for people like U2, Johnny Cash, Arcade Fire, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Metallica, Nick Cave, Coldplay and The Killers. He is the Creative Director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode for the last 35 years, and the visual man for U2 having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for four decades.
In 2006 Anton Corbijn started working on his first feature film, Control about the life, and death, of Ian Curtis, Joy Division’s lead singer. The film won around 20 awards worldwide, including 5 BIFA’s & the Camera d’Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival 2007. Corbijn has since made The American starring George Clooney (2010), A Most Wanted Man based on the novel by John Le Carré featuring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (2014) and Life about James Dean and photographer Dennis Stock, which stars Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan (2015). Spirits in the Forest, a concert film about Depeche Mode and their fans was released in 2019. During the 2020 lockdown Anton used his time to put together a monumental book on Depeche Mode, that saw the light in 2021. The book, published by Taschen, and called DM-AC, was a huge success. It was his 22nd published book, with two more books to follow this year. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is his first feature-length documentary.
