Stella McCartney unveils short film “Curtains Up”

British fashion designer Stella McCartney has teamed up with LA-based creative studio Tête-à-Tête to create a short film about Transcendental Meditation.

Featuring the iconic director and artist David Lynch, a father of the Transcendental Meditation movement, the film was created in support of the charitable works of the David Lynch Foundation, whose mission is to help prevent and eradicate the epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations through promoting the implementation of evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life.

The nine-minute short film is structured around the concept of a film within a film. Powerful images that show movement and activity on the surface of life and nature through light and colour are contrasted with the pulsing and sound of a film projector throughout. “Curtains Up” offers the viewers a space to reflect on the source of creativity, how Transcendental Meditation nurtures it, all while enlivening the self.

Stella McCartney stated in a press release: “Transcendental Meditation is very much a personal sense of space and clarity for me. It is one of the most liberating things that I can do to find clarity, mindfulness and wellbeing. It is an incredible concept, for humanity that allows you be a better person, be more productive, more thoughtful and more calm. I believe in it so much that collaborating with David Lynch Foundation in this film was a natural step. I’m a huge admirer of David, he’s an icon and a genius. He has such a dark calmness in everything that he does, his talent is just undeniable and I think that he’s made a true mark in the world of cinema and also in the world of mindfulness.”

“When you dive within, the Self is there and true happiness is there,” says David Lynch. "There’s a pure, huge, unbounded ocean of it. It’s bliss–physical, emo¬tional, mental, and spiritual happiness that starts growing from within.”

From September 6th through October 12th the film will be screened at a special “Sanctuary of Stillness” installation in the department store, Galeries Lafayette in Paris as part of their “Go For Good” environmental initiative.

Photo credit: Video still from “Curtains Up”