“Underground shelter is your best defense against radioactive fallout.” Cue perky music, tap dancing twins, and a ballerina that bakes the perfect croissant
Welcome to your new luxury home – buried 26 feet below. Complete with a mini-golf course, dance floor, swimming pool, two jacuzzis, and a thoroughly modern mermaid. “This is reality.” That is, until the nuclear siren rings.
(The [End) of History Illusion], by Celia Rowlson-Hall, is the 14th commission from Miu Miu Women’s Tales. The acclaimed short-film series invites today’s most profound and original female directors to investigate vanity and femininity in the 21st century.
Dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Celia Rowlson-Hall is best known for her iconic choreography in the hit TV show Girls; her work on music videos by Alicia Keys and MGMT; her sweet, sad shorts, such as The Audition and Prom Night; and the 2015 feature, MA, a contemporary, wordless retelling of Virgin Mary’s venture, through deserts and dirt-tracks. Filmmaker Magazine says Rowlson-Hall “folds one art form into another” and “allows her to employ her body as a storytelling vehicle.”About her new Women’s Tales film, Rowlson-Hall says, “I wanted to explore commercialism in the face of fear, creating a spectacle to distract and entertain, an escape from our present-day reality.” She knew the perfect readymade setting: a Cold War era, Las Vegas nuclear bunker, which was shaped into a picturesque family home, designed to survive a nuclear war for an entire year. “When I saw the new Miu Miu collection,” reflects Rowlson-Hall, “there was something about the textiles and colors that made me want to create characters which could come with this space.”
