When Icelandic band Sigur Ros released their latest album, Valtari (XL), at the end of May, they also launched a cool project to create videos for each of its songs. “The Valtari Mystery Film Experiment” asked each of a dozen filmmakers to create a video for a particular album track, providing all of them the same “modest” budget but placing no other limitations or expectations on the end result. As the band’s website reads, “The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom.”
The “mystery” part of the name comes from the fact that Sigur Ros has kept the identity of each filmmaker a secret until the video is unveiled; a new video has been going up on the band’s site every two weeks since May 25, and they’ll continue through November 19. Among the participating filmmakers whose work has already been revealed are Ramin Bahrani, John Cameron Mitchell, and Ryan McGinley. This morning the video for “Varðeldur” was unveiled. Chicago filmmaker Melika Bass created it.