French artist and Oscar-winning Hollywood director Michel Gondry gained international acclaim for his feature films, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, as well as innovative music videos for Björk, Daft Punk, and Radiohead. His work – often dealing with themes of dreaming, perception and reality – is characterised by an inspired spareness of resources, a playful approach, and an aesthetic that focuses on fantasy, self-empowerment, and ingenuity rather than consumerism and glossy production values.
His participatory project Home Movie Factory – having already toured internationally in New York, Tokyo, São Paulo, and Paris – will be there to experience at Ruhr Ding: Schlaf. In a three-hour parkour through several different film sets, participants can achieve their dream of making their own film and bringing a self-scripted story to the big screen. The unique concept of the Home Movie Factory, inspired by Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind, invites participants to unleash their own creativity and imagination at the Alte Dreherei in Mülheim. Since its first edition in 2008, Home Movie Factory has created a large archive of site-specific films, which will now be expanded to include viewpoints from the Ruhr region via Ruhr Ding: Schlaf.
Michel Gondry was born 1963 in Versailles.
