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Documentary on the Hipgnosis design studio to get UK premiere at Sundance London
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 23 May 2023
A documentary about the London-based music-centric design studio Hipgnosis – which was behind the distinctive artwork to a plethora of albums released from the late 1960s to the early 1980s – will get its UK premiere as part of the Sundance Film Festival London in July.
Originally premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last year, ‘Squaring The Circle’ was directed by Anton Corbijn. And, according to the official blurb, it “tells the story of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio Hipgnosis [who] were responsible for some of the most recognisable album covers of all time, including Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘Band On The Run’, and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Houses Of The Holy'”.
Says Corbijn: “My life has been dominated by sound and vision as it were. At seventeen, I started taking photos of musicians who created the soundtrack of my youth, first for magazines and later for record covers, and then trying out moving images as a director for music videos from the early 80s onwards”.
“It was a long road”, he adds, “but I eventually made feature films: my first one, [Ian Curtis biopic] ‘Control’, dealt with music I loved, and now my first documentary deals with record covers and their beauty and power, and the craziness to get there. It has been an honour to tell Hipgnosis’s, Storm’s and Po’s story in ‘Squaring The Circle’”.
Among those backing the film are BMG and the Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the latter being named after the design studio, its founder Merck Mercuriadis having been a big fan of the artwork it created and, for a time, Thorgerson’s manager.
The documentary will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival London on 7 Jul before going on general release and becoming available online on-demand on 14 Jul. Here’s a trailer:
