Inni

Inni is Sigur Rós’ second live film following 2007’s tour documentary Heima. Whereas that film positioned the group in the context of their Icelandic homeland, providing geographical, social and historical perspectives on their music, Inni focuses purely on the band’s performance, and stands as a stark counterpoint to Heima’s kaleidoscopic richness. Where Heima was lush and colorfully expansive, Inni is spare and near-monochromatic in its tunnel vision. Filmed in a manner that invites both intimacy and claustrophobia, Inni cocoons the viewer in a one-on-one relationship with the band, eschewing the audience for closeness, depicting how it feels for both band and fan to experience Sigur Rós live.

film tracklisting

ný batterí
svefn-g-englar
fljótavík
inní mér syngur vitleysingur
sæglópur
festival
e-bow
popplagið
lúppulagið

The film’s atmosphere is enhanced by Morisset’s re-filming of the original digital footage on 16mm, which was then re-filmed again, sometimes through prisms and other found objects, allowing Inni to look and feel like something recovered from the past. Interspersed with this is archival footage drawn from the band’s previous decade, dating back as far as 1998. This juxtaposition gives viewers the full scope of Sigur Rós’ origins, evolution, originality and influence.

‘klippa’ is a short film which shows how we set about creating the ‘unique concert artefact’ to be included in the ‘inni’ special edition. we wanted to give everyone a tangible piece of the concerts themselves, but figured some old confetti or a ticket stub wouldn’t pass muster. so we cajoled the band into giving up their treasured costumes (more than ‘clothes’, we think), as worn over the nights of november 20-21, 2008, and decided to cut them up into neat memento mori. In this way, no two people would ever receive the same thing, and everyone would feel part of this reverse creative process, aiming to make something new out of something old.

so, we got together our eclectic team of seamsters, and burned the midnight oil for many a long night, painstakingly pressing (but not washing!) each of the band’s outfits, and then then cutting them into neat squares and placing in individually numbered envelopes. the little package was then itself inserted into its own lavish special edition box, along with coloured vinyl 7-inch of the unreleased song ‘lúppulagið’, ‘inni’ enamel badge, light sensitive paper (confusing now, but more later) and all the other goodies.

but because there are only four outfits and three pairs of shoes, it’s turned out to be a finite resource, entirely governing the amount of special editions we have been able to create. some people have been asking how many there are and when they are going to run out. well, let’s make it a bit more interesting, and ask you to guess.