Chris Cunningham is an English music video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1970 and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk. Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos for Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" are perhaps his best known. His video for Björk's "All Is Full of Love" won multiple awards, including an MTV music video award for Breakthrough Video and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. It was also the first ever music video to win a Gold Pencil at the D&AD Awards. It can still be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His video for Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" was nominated for the "Best Video" award at the Brit Awards 2000. He also directed Madonna's "Frozen" video.
Chris Cunningham made his directorial debut in 1997 with the music video for "Come to Daddy" by Aphex Twin, which was instantly praised, banned, and raved about by many people in the business. He followed up by making the music video for "Windowlicker" by Aphex Twin, and the astounding "All is Full of Love" video by Björk. His incredible style alone makes him a director to watch out for.
Aphex Twin - Come to daddy
The song Come to daddy is one of the more famous that was directed by Chris Cunningham. the video contains disturbing imagery, The video opens with an old woman walking a dog in a grimy, industrial setting. The dog urinates on an abandoned television lying on the sidewalk, causing it to sputter unexpectedly into life. This unleashes an evil spirit from the set, accompanied by a gang of small children, all of whom bear the face of Richard D. James donning a demonic grin, who appear to be the inhabitants of the abandoned buildings. The children go around wreaking havoc, trashing an alley and chasing a man into his car.
Richard D. james discribed the making of Come to daddy: "Come to Daddy came about while I was just hanging around my house, getting pissed and doing this crappy death metal jingle. Then it got marketed and a video was made, and this little idea that I had, which was a joke, turned into something huge. It wasn't right at all."
Come to daddy was named number three best video of all time in 2005. Chris Cunningham has worked on other music videos for Aphex twin like 'Window licker' and the monkey drummer video.
Bjork - All is full of love
"Most video directors have one trick that they use all the time. Then there are people who build a whole world around them. Chris is like that. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with Chris."
All is Full of Love is an elegant, moving description of two Björk robots in love. As they are pieced and wired into existence, they sing to each other and fall in love. The video reaches its harmonious climax as the robots join in embrace while still being detailed by the industrial machines beside them. Each robot was designed by Chris Cunningham, faces reminiscent of Björk's own delicate features. Cunningham said "When I first heard the track I wrote down the words 'sexual,' 'milk,' 'white porcelain,' 'surgery.' [The video]'s a combination of several fetishes: industrial robotics, female anatomy, and flourescent light in that order." The video recieved many awards thanks to Cunningham's genius.
Squarepusher - come on my selector
Come on My Selector is another brilliant promo. This video won many big-time industry awards. The original idea for the squarepusher video was a cat and dog chasing around a house, but three days before the shoot Cunningham changed the idea to having a chinese girl escaping a mental hospital. This was the first video that Chri Cunninngham edited together himself.
Personal Quotes
All I ever do is talk about films and then not make them. As a result I thought: just shut up about it - make a film then talk about it when it's done. But it's got to be something that I'm absolutely frothing about. After three or four years tinkering with other people's material I came to the conclusion that I just had to develop my own material from scratch.
I love anatomy. I love the human form, I always have. That's why I got into painting and sculpting, that's why I got into doing prosthetics, that's why I got into making films about bodies. But the one thing that I hadn't been able to incorporate was sound. And that was my favorite love of all. And as soon as I started doing that in film, that was it for me.
We did versions of it in six different languages, to go round the world. The German version was fucking hilarious, just really brutal. Everything sounded so aggressive and rude. The girl sounded like she was going to get out of the chair and stab you after she'd finished her monologue. [talking about his ad for Playstation, Mental Wealth]
Music production
In 2004/2005, Cunningham took a sabbatical from filmmaking to learn about music production and recording and develop his own music projects. In December 2007 Cunningham produced two tracks, "Three Decades" and "Primary Colours", for Primary Colours, the second album by The Horrors. In the summer of 2008, due to scheduling conflicts with his feature film script writing he couldn't work on the rest of the album which was subsequently recorded by Geoff Barrow from Portishead. In 2008, he produced and arranged a new version of 'I Feel Love' for the Gucci commercial that he also directed. He travelled to Nashville to work with Donna Summer to record a brand new vocal for it.
Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.
other Filmography projects Chris Cunningham has played a major role in:
"Second Bad Vilbel" (1996) video for Autechre
"Back With The Killer Again" (1996) video for The Auteurs
"Light Aircraft on Fire" (1996) video for The Auteurs
"Another Day" (1996) video for Lodestar
"Space Junkie" (1996) video for Holy Barbarians
"36 Degrees" (1996) video for Placebo
"Personally" (1997) video for 12 Rounds
"Jesus Coming in for the Kill" (1997) video for Lifes Addiction
"The Next Big Thing" (1997) video for Jesus Jones
"Tranquillizer" (1997) video for Geneva
"No More Talk" (1997) video for Dubstar
"Something To Say" (1997) video for Jocasta
"Come To Daddy" (1997) video for Aphex Twin
"Only You" (1998) video for Portishead
"Frozen" (1998) video for Madonna
"Come On My Selector" (1998) video for Squarepusher
"All Is Full of Love" (1999) video for Björk
"Windowlicker" (1999) video for Aphex Twin
"Afrika Shox" (1999) video for Leftfield and Afrika Bambaataa
"Mental Wealth" (1999) commercial for PlayStation
"Flex" (2000), using sounds created by Aphex Twin
"Monkey Drummer" (2001), using "Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels mount" from Aphex Twin's album Drukqs
"Rubber Johnny" (2005), using "Afx237 V7" from Aphex Twin's album Drukqs
"Sheena Is A Parasite" (2006), video for The Horrors
"Gucci Flora" (2009) commercial for Gucci Perfume
here is a URL to a chris cunningham interview by pixelvision which questions him on his short film titled 'Rubber Johnny'
http://www.pixelsurgeon.com/interviews/interview.php?id=181
Audiences reactions to his work:
Generaly, when searching and browsing through reviews and comments left by veiwers of chris cunningham's work, you find that people find his work inspirational and unique in its concepts and amazing special effects .I print screened these customer reviews of the Chris Cunningham DVD from Amazon.com.
the reviews rate the DVD as 10 out of 10, one of the comments someone left said "In short, this looks to be a superb portfolio of work, and something you'll come to time and time again, both for yourself and to show any friends that come to visit. Fantastic."
Chris Cunningham's work also recieves tremmendous praise from veiwers on YouTube. i print screened commetns posted on the short film 'Rubber Johnny' by aphex twin and Chris.
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