Daniel Askill has released the first short film for the track “Happens To The Heart,” posthumous Leonard Cohen single. This is the first single to be included on the posthumous album Thanks For The Dance featuring Bryce Dessner, Feist and Damien Rice, which is set to be released on November 22nd.
“Happens To The Heart,” contains Cohen’s signature voice and dark songwriting style, complimented with an acoustic guitar and strings that are complimented beautifully by the visuals. The video begins with a young male venturing down a forest as he begins to take off his clothes, and breaks down in front of the camera. He eventually comes across a monk in the forest, who gives him a road, before he is set on his way again. Eventually the male comes to the end of a cliff, by a lake, where he sits on the edge and begins meditating, before eventually levitating.
This film was inspired by Cohen’s who was inspired dedication to Buddhism and the five years Cohen spent living at California’s Mount Baldy Zen Center. “I wanted to make something that spoke to Leonard’s years as a zen monk,” says the director. “This film is a quiet, symbolic narrative that charts the letting go of ego and the trappings of fame.”
This latest single serves as the first of many planned short films that will be made for the upcoming album release. Nowness, who is behind the release has recruited a global roster of filmmakers and artists to present visual interpretations of Leonard Cohen’s life and lyrics in a new collaboration with the Leonard Cohen Estate and Sony Music Canada.
As Bunny Kinney, Nowness’ creative director explained:
“Our ambition with this series of short films is not only to uphold and celebrate Leonard Cohen’s incredible artistic legacy with new visuals, helmed by some of the most exciting image-makers working today, but to also further explore Cohen’s work and the core thematics of his music: from love and loss to artistic expression itself, identity, self-reflection, transformation and transcendence.”
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