R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and co-director Dominic DeJoseph (who has directed previous films for R.E.M.) recruited actress Kirsten Dunst to star in one of the videos for “We All Go Back To Where We Belong.” Dunst is a Golden Globe-nominated performer who has starred in such movies as Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Marie Antoinette, and the Spider-Man trilogy. She recently received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for her role in the current film Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier.
The other film stars iconic and legendary Dial-A-Poem artist/poet/activist John Giorno. Over the course of his notable career, Giorno has collaborated on several acclaimed projects with such luminaries as William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Glenn Branca. His work includes several books and multimedia poetry experiments and events. A career-spanning collection of his poems, entitled Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962-2007 was published in 2008. His first one-person gallery show, entitled Black Paintings and Drawings, was mounted at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York in 2010.
Both black and white films for “We All Go Back To Where We Belong” capture their subjects in stark relief using a strong key light and shot with a stationary camera, an effect that Stipe describes as lending “gravity and beauty” to the proceedings.
These videos arrive on the heels of last year’s successful Collapse Into Now Film Project, which featured films by artists for every song on the album. Stipe said of the new project, “To be able to work with John and Kirsten was a dream I carried since we recorded the song, and their participation completes the song for me.”
“We All Go Back To Where We Belong,” which Rolling Stone recently premiered, is one of three new tracks to be included on R.E.M.’s upcoming final album R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 — 2011 — a 40-song career-spanning retrospective that collects, for the first time ever, songs from pioneering American band’s entire 31-year career, including their years on both the IRS label (1982 to 1987) and Warner Bros. Records (1988 to 2011). The collection will be released on Warner Bros. Records on November 15th, 2011 and is currently available for pre-order on iTunes here and Amazon here.