Spike Lee’s dazzling David Byrne concert film returns to cinemas this August
Stage to screen
There are very few live shows that feel genuinely impossible to recreate on screen. American Utopia somehow managed it anyway. David Byrne’s stripped-back Broadway production, which saw the former David Byrne perform barefoot alongside an 11-piece roaming ensemble, was part concert, part theatre and part beautifully controlled chaos. Then Spike Lee got hold of it and turned it into one of the best concert films of the last decade.
Now the acclaimed 2020 concert film is returning to cinemas for one night only on the 5th of August, landing in independent and multiplex cinemas across the UK and Ireland in a newly restored 4K edition.
Directed by Spike Lee, the film captures Byrne’s hugely ambitious Broadway production, which evolved out of his 2018 album American Utopia before becoming one of the most celebrated live shows of recent years.
Byrne and his roaming ensemble performed tracks from across both his solo catalogue and Talking Heads’ discography, all while weaving around the stage carrying instruments, dancing in synchronised movement and somehow never tangling a single cable.
The original live production earned near-universal praise during its run, with critics particularly obsessed with how stripped-back yet overwhelmingly immersive it all felt.
The Broadway version ran at Hudson Theatre between 2019 and early 2020 after touring internationally, including UK dates in 2018. Lee filmed the production using 11 camera operators, capturing every twitch, stomp and communal drumbeat with an intimacy that made the audience feel almost inside the choreography.
When the film first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival five years ago, it quickly became one of the most acclaimed concert films in years, later receiving a similarly warm reception at the BFI London Film Festival. The return screening marks five years since that original debut and gives audiences another chance to see the production the way it arguably works best: extremely loud and extremely large.
Tickets for the 5th of August screenings go on sale from the 18th of June.
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