Innovating Documentary Form: Gary Hustwit on Eno

About this virtual event

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit will be presenting a look at the creation and distribution of his most recent film ENO, which utilized proprietary technology to innovate on the form of cinema. This is an opportunity to learn more about how emerging technologies can be used as a storytelling tool and what unexpected challenges filmmakers can face when working outside of the box.

This moderated conversation will be followed by an opportunity to ask questions of the filmmaker.

Check out Distribution Advocates' “Filmmaking Doesn’t End With Picture Lock”: Distribution Case Study of Generative Documentary ‘Eno’

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About ENO

Rich with access to hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music, Gary Hustwit’s latest documentary Eno employs groundbreaking technology to accomplish something that’s never been done before: a feature film that’s never the same twice. Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno, and Eno’s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist's own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.

About Director Gary Hustwit

Gary Hustwit (he/him) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in New York, and the CEO of Anamorph, a generative media studio and software company. He has produced over 20 documentaries and film projects, including the award-winning I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the band Wilco; Oddsac, an experimental feature film by the band Animal Collective; and Mavis!, the HBO documentary about gospel/soul music legend Mavis Staples.

About Moderator Abby Sun

Abby Sun (she/her) is the International Documentary Association’s director of programs and editor of Documentary, a quarterly print and digital magazine. In 2024, she co-founded the Future Film Coalition, safeguarding the future of U.S. independent film through research and advocacy, and researched media policy to support documentary films in the public interest as a Shorenstein Documentary Film Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Abby has bylines in Film Comment, Filmmaker, Film Quarterly, Notebook, and Sight & Sound; served on festival juries for Hot Docs, Dokufest, Palm Springs, New Orleans, and CAAMfest, as well as nominating committees for the Gotham Awards and Cinema Eye; and received a fall 2022 Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship. Her hometown is Columbia, Missouri, US.