Imagine is a 1971-produced and 1972-released movie by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, filmed mostly at their Tittenhurst Park home in Ascot, England, during 1971, and intended for television. All the songs from Lennon's Imagine album of the same name appear in the soundtrack, and also the songs "Mrs. Lennon" and "Don't Count The Waves", from Ono's album Fly.
The program consists mostly of videos (then called "promos") around the song selection, interspersed with occasional slices of Lennon and Ono's life together, and also fantasy and "gag" sequences. In one of these, a succession of men (ranging from Lennon and Ono's assistants to celebrities including Fred Astaire, Jack Palance, Dick Cavett, and even George Harrison) escort Ono over and over through a doorway; in another, John and Yoko lose each other on the Tittenhurst grounds, and go looking.
The director of photography was Daniel Richter, who was personal photographer for Lennon and Ono in the early 1970s. He earlier gained recognition playing the character Moonwatcher (an ape-man) in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The opening video, of the title song "Imagine", was used years later in a worldwide simultaneous broadcast, to commemorate Lennon's life and music, on what would have been his 50th birthday (October 9, 1990).
Although the "Imagine" music video has shown up in many places since, the other videos in this film have rarely been seen outside of this film although the footage from them has usually been made up to be other Lennon videos in compilations such as Lennon Legend.
The path John and Yoko are seen walking down during the opening scene (and the first notes of Imagine) is the path leading up to their British home at Tittenhurst Park. They would move to New York shortly after they had filmed that sequence.
The white chess set from the "Don't Count The Waves" segment is Yoko's art piece "Play It By Trust" which has showed up in many of her exhibitions since.
By the use of polarized light 3D-glasses, the audience gets an impression about the way seeing works. In a semi-scientific way, two scientists explain the brain, the eyes and their functional connections. Most amazing is the explanation (with examples) of the scale of things that one is seeing: By changing the distance between the two lenses of the 3D-camera, which is equivalent to varying the distance between our eyes, a scenario like a fast motor-boat ride along a running, rocky river can be changed into a miniature-like-looking, model-train-scaled, nice little trip through the world of the very, very little people. Written by Julian Reischl
Winner of the first Lil' Memphis Film Festival, a quarterly film festival held in Memphis, Tennessee.
A little boy with a BIG imagination.
