Under the Skin filmmaker-composer duo Jonathan Glazer and Mica Levi have reunited for Strasbourg 1518, a short film about “a powerful involuntary mania which took hold of citizens in the city of Strasbourg just over 500 years ago”.
The film, which is commissioned by Artangel and the Sadler’s Wells dance company for the BBC Arts Culture in Quarantine series, is based on a historical event dubbed the “dancing plague” that occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, where hundreds of people manically danced on the streets for days on end.
A “collaboration in isolation with some of the greatest dancers working today”, the film will feature an original score by Levi, who earned a BAFTA nomination for her work on Under the Skin.
The project is the second short film collaboration between Glazer and Levi after last year’s The Fall, inspired by the artist Goya and Donald Trump’s adult sons.
Strasbourg 1518 arrives amid news of Glazer’s upcoming feature film with A24 (which also distributed Under the Skin), a Holocaust drama loosely based on the novel The Zone Of Interest about a Jewish Sonderkommando and his Nazi officer. A television series based on Under the Skin is currently in the works too.
Strasbourg 1518 will premiere July 20 on BBC Two