Floria Sigismondi
Biography
Floria Sigismondi is a photographer and director. Apart from her art exhibitions she is best known for directing music videos. Her trademark dilating, jittery camerawork, noticeable as early as her video for Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People", has been replicated by a great number of directors since. Her parents, Lina and Domenico Sigismondi, were opera singers. Her family, including her sister Antonella, moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada when she was two. In her childhood she became obsessed by drawing and painting. Later, from 1987 she studied painting and illustration at the Ontario College of Art, today's Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD). When she took a photography course, she became obsessed once more, and graduated with a photography major. Floria started a career as a fashion photographer. She came to directing music videos when she was approached by the production company The Revolver Film Co., and directed music videos for a number of Canadian bands. Her very innovative, but also very disturbing video works, located in sceneries she once described as "entropic underworlds inhabited by tortured souls and omnipotent beings", attracted a number of very prominent musicians. With her photography and sculpture installations she had solo exhibitions in Hamilton and Toronto, New York, Brescia, Italy, Göteborg, Sweden and London. Her photographs also were included in numerous group exhibitions, together with those of photographers like Cindy Sherman and Joel-Peter Witkin. The German art press Die Gestalten Verlag has published two monographs of her photography, "Redemption" (1999) and "Immune" (2005).
Family
Lillian Berlin (2004 - present) ( 1 child)
Trivia
Studied painting and illustration at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Daughter, Tosca Vera Sigismondi-Berlin, was born in October 2004. She was named after the Italian opera "Tosca".
Husband is Lillian Berlin, lead singer of the rock band Living Things.
Met her husband in 2003 while shooting the video "Bombs Below" for rock band Living Things in Prague.
Directed music videos for Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, Tricky, Filter, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Interpol, Living Things, Christina Aguilera, Sigur Ros, Incubus, The Cure, The White Stripes, Muse, Billy Talent and more.
Her favorite films are Mamma Roma (1962), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Tenant (1976), Sid and Nancy (1986) and Edward Scissorhands (1990).
Her parents, Lina and Domenico Sigismondi, were opera singers.
Currently resides in Toronto, New York City and Los Angeles.
As point of 2017, she directed only one feature movie, The Runaways (2010).
Personal Quotes
I am an optimist of course, but I am a realist also. It is evident that the course of the future will be very different than we enjoy it now. I depict a world gone wrong because that is part of nature... our human nature. We play God. Whether it be through war, the environment or genome manipulation, there is plenty of room for corruption and corrupted it will be.
I express my angers and loves through my work. Things that preoccupy me and elate me. Subconsciously, it creeps into the images I create.
I come up with ideas in photography the same way as I would video. The difference is that you need a lot more ideas to fill a video. With a photograph, people will look as long as they like, but with moving picture, you demand someone's time in order to properly view it in its entirety.
[on television] Television is very voyeuristic if you like that... it is mainly used for the dumbing down of society... I struggle with this fine line everyday... the goal is to help reinvent television in a way that informs and not contorts... human are more complex then that. Contradictions in life are what make life interesting.
