Bill Viola Movies

Return is a methodical construction of the approach of an individual towards an unseen goal, which assumes metaphorical significance. Viola moves...

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple...

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh,...

Viola experimental short

Viola describes A Non-Dairy Creamer as "the eradication of the individual by self-consumption." The artist's face, visible only as a reflected image...

Created by Bill Viola and Kira Perov and opened in May 2014, Martyrs shows four individuals, across four colour vertical plasma screens, being...

The fourth video in the five-part digital-image cycle project "Going Forth By Day" (2002), "The Voyage" features an elderly man who is dying,...

The Quintet of the Astonished shows the unfolding expressions of five actors in such extreme slow motion that every minute detail of their changing...

Moving through its five parts, the work describes a cycle of birth through to death, depicting both an eternal, universal Mary, and an earthly Mary...

With a title referring to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant, the film - an ardent dream entirely...

A documentary short in Chott el-Djerid.

A series of shots depicting "America" are laid over a classic Gregorian Chant recreated through the distortion of a woman's screams.

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern,...

Gerald Fox’s film documents Bill Viola and his wife and close collaborator Kira Perov’s odyssey to create two permanent video...

A small crowd of people are gathered in wait when they are suddenly struck by a massive onslaught of water.

Offering a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the work documents a succession of people slowly emerging out of darkness...

The ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall.

The three panels of Bill Viola’s triptych show video footage of birth (on the left), death (on the right) and a metaphorical journey between...

Junkyard Levitation is a visual pun on the concept of "mind over matter," as a man attempts to levitate while lying prone in a junkyard. Writes...

Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an...