Heart of a Dog

The year 2011 marks a watershed in the life of artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Her beloved dog Lolabelle, who had been at her side for many years, passed away. Not long after that she also lost her mother, to be followed less than two years later by Lou Reed, the front man of The Velvet Underground, with whom she’d been together for 21 years.
Anderson transformed the mourning process into a film. Like her multimedia performances, Heart of a Dog is a patchwork of disparate elements, interspersing animations and 8mm home movies with found footage. A constant is Anderson’s voice, which meanders past personal recollections and major topics such as love, life and death. Without sentimentality or woolliness, she relates rituals from The Tibetan Book of the Dead or Wittgenstein’s linguistic philosophy to autobiographical stories and observations on the controlled society that has developed since 9/11. A kaleidoscopic film essay, held together by Anderson’s violin compositions and soundscapes.

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