A Dog Called Money
Synopsis
Back home, the words become poems, songs, then an album, which is recorded in an unprecedented art experiment in Somerset House, London. In a specially constructed room behind one-way glass, the public - all cameras surrendered - are invited to watch the five week process as a live sound-sculpture. Murphy exclusively documents the experiment with the same forensic vision and private access as their travels.
By capturing the immediacy of their encounters with the people and places they visited, Murphy shows the humanity at the heart of the work, tracing the sources of the songs, their special metamorphosis into recorded music, and ultimately, cinema.
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Panorama Dokumente - World premiere
Details
- Year
- 2019
- Type of project
- Features
- Running time
- 90 min
- Director
-
Seamus Murphy 1st Feature
- Producer
- Isabel Davis, Katie Holly, James Wilson, Seamus Murphy
- Co-Producer
- Evan Horan
- Executive Producer
- Thomas Benski, Marisa Clifford, Tim O'Shea, Jim Reeve, Laura Macara, Celine Haddad, Kieron J. Walsh, Brian Message, Sumit Bothra, Sebastian Gollek
- Editor
- Sebastian Gollek
- Screenwriter
- Seamus Murphy
- Director of Photography
- Seamus Murphy
- Sound
- Seamus Murphy; Sound Design: Brendan Rehill
- Composer
- Polly Jean Harvey
- Principal cast
- PJ Harvey
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Ireland, UK co-production
A Pulse Films (UK), Blinder Films (IE), JW Films (UK) production in association with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland (IE), Somerset House (UK), Artangel (UK) with support of ATC Management (UK), Great Point Media (UK)
Pulse Films
17 Hanbury StreetLondon
E1 6QR
JW Films
Sales Company
Autlook Films
Salma AbdallaSpittelberggasse 3/14
1070 Vienna
Austria
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.
Let England Shake
Director: Seamus Murphy
Year: 2011
Short films inspired by and created to accompany all 12 songs on PJ Harvey's album Let England Shake (2011). An attempt to reveal a little more about the quiet Polly Jean.
Not Punch and Judy: The Chronicle and Story of an Experiment in Emergent Practice
Director: Julia Fry
Year:
Using ideas from Carl Jung - exploring and accepting the inner world, Carolyn Abbate - analysis of dissonance to find the narrative voice - and Hilde Lindemann Nelson - using narrative to repair damaged identity, I filmed my process of creating puppets and recorded some of the thoughts that arose as I made them. I utilised emergent practice in the filmmaking, which meant letting go of preconceived ideas to let narrative arise in the moment. I wanted my puppets to unite, rather than fight in the traditional Punch and Judy manner.
She Sings of Murder and Love
Director: Virginia Heath
Year: 2027
A feminist musical documentary, an ethical telling of a true-crime story. An anti-true-crime documentary, the film is a bold, cinematic portrayal of a unique Irish singer-song writer Keeley Moss. Every song Keeley writes and performs celebrates the life of, and demands justice for, Inga Maria Hauser, a young German backpacker, sexually assaulted and murdered in Northern Ireland in 1988. As the facts of Inga Maria's case migrate from Keeley's meticulous blog into her songs, the Director ‘investigates the investigator’ to capture Keeley's fever dream of the intense week of adolescent freedom Inga Maria enjoyed, before she became a 'murder victim'. Through the prism of the Director's feminist gaze, and the actress-cast-as-Inga, Keeley and Inga Maria's personas blur, a rejection of the murder porn audiences are so fatigued by. Through the empathy the Director clearly feels for Keeley’s difficult adolescence and her subsequent obsessive mission, we feel the devastating impact Inga Maria's violent death had on two generations of her family and their anguish at the continuing lack of justice. Perhaps most remarkable of all, we discover the unexpected and profound gifts that Inga Maria has rewarded Keeley's dedication with.