On Monday night Madonna screened her highly-anticipated Secret Project Revolution film guerrilla-style on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Berlin and other major cities all over the world.
The 17-minute black and white film (which has since been uploaded to YouTube) that she co-directed with famed fashion photographer Steven Klein, opens with the Jean-Luc Godard quote, “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” and aims to show the effects of violence and intolerance with intriguing scenes of Madonna and her crew of dancers. There’s a violent shooting rampage, plenty of Gothic imagery, canned applause, audio clips of the 55-year-old pop star talking on stage during her recent MDNA World Tour and a haunting soundtrack that includes snippets of her singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”.
The purpose of the gritty project? To introduce Art For Freedom, a global digital initiative that aims to fuel free speech – to respond, address and protest persecution around the world. No doubt, the project was fueled by the highly publicized arrest of feminist punk-rock band Pussy Riot earlier this year (3 Pussy Riot members were given two year prison sentences over an anti-Putin performance in a Russian cathedral). To her credit, Madonna has been the most outspoken supporter of the group.
The online public art project will encourage artists from around the globe to express their personal meaning of freedom and revolution, in the form of video, music, poetry, and photography. Public submissions will become part of the ongoing Art For Freedom platform: contributors can join the project by uploading original artwork or tagging original posts #artforfreedom.
“I cannot tolerate it when groups like Pussy Riot are thrown in jail for criticizing people for their art,” Madonna said at the screening and launch of her Secret Project Revolution film on Tuesday night at the Gagosian Gallery in New York City. “This is a serious offense to me because god made art. It’s an artist’s job to shape the world he or she lives in.”
Madonna’s #secretprojectrevolution short film is now available for free download via BitTorrent.
