Feature Film

Feature Film is part of The Artangel Collection. Since its initial presentation in 1999, it has been installed at the Mead Art Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre in 2012 and Peninsula Arts, Plymouth in 2016 and Tate Modern, London in 2019.

  • Title: Feature Film
  • Artist: Douglas Gordon
  • Date: 1999
  • Medium: Video with sound, large scale projection and small monitor screen with DVD player
  • Dimensions: Overall display dimensions variable
  • Duration: 122 minutes
Gordon wants to jolt us into looking at a medium whose technological tricks have become so familiar that we no longer see how magical it really is. Spend an hour or so in Feature Film and I promise that you'll never take the movies for granted again. —  Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph, 7 April 1999

Music always underscored Alfred Hitchcock’s vision — most notably through is collaboration with one of the greatest of all film composers, Bernard Herrmann. In Feature Film, Douglas Gordon arranged a divorce — between sound and vision — and orchestrated an affair — between what you remember and what you see. The large projection is a portrait of conductor James Conlon featuring his face and hands as he conducts Hermann’s score for Vertigo, Hitchcock’s classic tale of mistaken identity. The orchestra can be heard but not seen. A domestic monitor showing a video of Vertigo accompanies the cinema-scale projection of the conductor’s features.

Video: Excerpt of Douglas Gordon, Feature Film, 2000. You can also watch this video on Vimeo.

Douglas Gordon, Feature Film,1999 installed at Peninsula Arts in 2016

At Peninsula Arts

Plymouth, 24 September — 19 November 2016

Peninsula Arts presented Douglas Gordon’s Feature Film in an exhibition titled 'Searching for Genius' that explored talent, virtuosity and genius. It was exhibited alongside a selection of works from Gordon’s Blind Stars series, in which publicity photographs of acclaimed figures are singed at the eyes to reveal a mirror beneath. Gordon’s film collaboration with Philippe Parreno, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was also screened in the art centre’s cinema during the exhibition.

Image: 'Feature Film' installed at Peninsula Arts, Plymouth. Photograph: Alan Stewart, Plymouth University.

at Mead Art Gallery

Warwick, 1 May — 23 June 2012

Douglas Gordon's Feature Film was presented by the Mead Art Gallery, alongside his 2006 collaboration with Philippe Parreno: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. The exhibition, entitled 'Maestros', brought these two works together for the first time, comparing two masters of their craft immersed in their own space, performing with and at the same time abstracted from the players around them, offering a compelling portrait of virtuoso talent.

Image: Installation view of Douglas Gordon, Feature Film at Mead Art Gallery, Warwick in 2013. Photograph: Courtesy Mead Art Gallery

Previous Presentations

Since the launch of The Artangel Collection, Feature Film has been presented at: