Harmony Korine is trying to remake cinema

The Future. Filmmaker and painter Harmony Korine is taking his experimental, narrative-eschewing style to the next level with his new venture, Edglrd — a collective of artists creating hyperactive, interactive, and gamified entertainment. A response to dueling forces of corporatized franchise filmmaking and the fracturing of mainstream culture, Korine’s novel art form may not be for everybody, but it could become formative for a new generation of filmmakers looking to create a new lane in independent cinema.

Gamin’ it
Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers, Gummo) and a cadre of artists and video game designers are trying to create a new form of entertainment from a house in Palm Beach, Florida.

• Edglrd is trying to blend the worlds of film and video gaming, creating projects using game engines, animation, imaging, AI, face swapping, and QR codes to break down the barrier of passively watching something and interacting with it.
• The ambition is to create an art form that’s “tailored to young people, who are often overstimulated and attention deficient,” as they juggle multiple screens.
• The aesthetic, which Korine dubs “gamecore,” asks: “what is the feeling of being inside of a game? Or even something close to a drug experience?”
• Additionally, Edglrd has a hi-tech clothing component (one sweater has a working monitor on it) and a skateboard division.

Edglrd, which counts co-president of The Paris Review Matt Holt as its leading investor, already has two “blinx” (what they’re calling this new form of amorphous content) in the hopper — the Travis Scott-starring assassin movie Agrro Dr1ft (set to debut at the Venice Film Festival) and the first-person interactive robbery project, Home Invasion.

Ultimately, Korine hopes to get to the place where Edglrd is dropping a new project once a month by keeping budgets low and iterating on projects extremely fast.