Jon Hopkins 'Collider' by Tom Haines

By David Knight
Posted On 12th December 2013
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Tom Haines's film for Jon Hopkins' Collider has a hard act to follow, coming after the epic award-winning video for Hopkins' Open Eye Signal. There's a similar focus on one individual, and photography once again by the redoubtable Steve Annis - who won the best cinematography award at the UKMVAs in October for his work on Open Eye Signal. Unlike that Aoife McArdle-directed video, this is a far more intense, internalised experience. But it's just as mesmerizing.

A girl's extreme behaviour at a rave leads to her switching into an alternate reality, alone in an vast derelict industrial space. And in her increasingly frenzied state, this switches to being her main reality.

From the director

Tom Haines:

"Jon's music has a transportive quality, which can be blissful and expansive, but can also be internal, and more aggressive, and Collider is at this end of the spectrum. We wanted to create an internal journey, which was unflinching, singular and claustrophobic and at the same time liberating.

"The video is like a voodoo ceremony, where the lead character dances herself into frenzy, and through the dance gains access to a parallel dimension; it's her unfurling thoughts, her dislocated mind, and hints at something more apocalyptic - an end game for her and us."