Imagine

Imagine (1972)

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

A surreal, half-fiction, half real life footage of a day in the life of John lennon and Yoko Ono, composed to music from John's historic 'Imagine' album and Yoko's 'Fly'.

Date of release
1972-12-23
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (31)
Runtime
1h 8m
Genres
Music, Documentary, TV Movie
Director
Steve Gebhardt, John Lennon, Yoko Ono

Casting

Interesting facts

Imagine is a 1972 feature-length music film by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, filmed at their Tittenhurst Park home in Ascot, Berkshire, England, and in various locations in London and New York between May and September 1971. All the songs from Lennon's 1971 Imagine album appear in the soundtrack, and also the songs "Mrs. Lennon", "Mind Train", "Don't Count the Waves" and "Midsummer New York" from Ono's 1971 album Fly.

Production

Lennon said of the improvised nature of the film at the time, "The one we're making now is very loose; they just bring the camera every day and we just decide what to do that day."

Ono said of the now-famous film for the song "Imagine", "It just happened naturally. I was well aware of the symbolism of everything – closing and then opening the shutters to let the light in. It's rather personal, but I had a definite reason why I smiled at the end, in addition to loving being next to John."

Lennon talking about their film-making together, said, "Yoko's quite adept in film-making and she'd made quite a few films before I'd met her. I used to make 8mm films at home and superimpose and do tricks with it and just play arbitrary records with it. But when I met Yoko she said, 'Well why don't you do it seriously?' So she sort of helped me to develop in that area and I find it's very similar to recording, just visual.

On the creative process and the film for the song "Jealous Guy", Ono said, "We enjoyed making films together. John came up with big ideas, or ideas that seemed big to me at the time. He thought of using a helicopter, which added a new dimension to our film.

Of the final scene in the film, Ono said, "John was the most romantic man I ever encountered. We were on South Beach on Staten Island. 'Let's really upset them and end the film with us walking on water.' (I'll let you guess whose idea that was!) We tried – that is, I know it looked a bit awkward, but it was a windy day and the waves were rough. Anyway, what you see is what you get. Enjoy."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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