Coming...IK! Archival Material -
J&Y Art & Films
Scene from Apotheosis
APOTHEOSIS -
16mm film, color, sound, 18-1/2 minutes
Directed & produced by John Lennon & Yoko Ono
John and Yoko's film,
Apotheosis was first screened in December of 1970 at the 7-3/4 New York
Film Festival.
Chrissie Isles writes in YES Yoko
Ono:
The film was made in winter, using a camera filming
from a hot air balloon, and despite its apparent seamlessness, is edited
in three parts. The first part, lasting only a few seconds, shows
the head and shoulders of Ono and Lennon in close-up, wrapped in coats and
scarves, their mouths and noses muffled against the cold. Both stand
silently in the square of a picturesque English village.
In the next, longer section, the camera draws upward away from the square,
showing rooftops, an aerial view of cars, people, buildings, the local
church, and, as the village recedes, a patchwork of fields covered in
snow.
As the sounds of the village die away a silence ensues, intensifying
proportionally as the balloon rises. The silence is broken only by
the distant barking of dogs far below, the occasional gunshot as someone
hunting in the fields pursues his prey, and the sound of the hot air
balloon's apparatus. The white landscape recedes as the balloon
gently drifts further and further upward, until there is complete
silence.
In the third and final section, the balloon ascends into white clouds and
the screen remains white for several minutes until the balloon re-emerges
above the clouds, where the blue sky and winter sun can suddenly be
seen. The journey ends with this dramatic, sublime image of a clear
blue sky.
 |
Rare photographs of
John and Yoko filming Apotheosis have been published in the book, The
Beatles Files
(Barnes & Noble Inc. by arrangement with Salamander
Books Ltd. Year 2000) The photos are from the Sunday Telegraph files. |
"John and Yoko, dressed from head to toe in black capes, hoods, balaclavas and gloves, filming Apotheosis 2 in the snow in the Market Square, Lavenham, Suffolk on December 5. This was the couple's second attempt to make their...hot-air-balloon movie, having rejected a previous attempt shot over Basingstoke, Hampshire. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the word Apotheosis means 'release from earthly life, or more strictly deification or canonization.'"
