Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)

Directed by

Dominic Sena

Country

United States

Runtime

30 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a short film featuring music videos from Janet Jackson's album Rhythm Nation 1814. It shows her and dancers in black military-style uniforms performing choreographed routines in a warehouse setting.

energeticdance-heavystylishuniformsyncopateddystopianiconic

What happens

Rhythm Nation 1814 is a 1989 American musical short film based on Janet Jackson's fourth studio album of the same name. Directed by Dominic Sena, the film notably includes the music video for "Rhythm Nation", as well as the videos for "Miss You Much" and "The Knowledge". It was filmed at the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles and the Glenarm Power Plant in Pasadena, California. The video is notable for its "dystopian" warehouse setting, the unisex black military-style uniforms in which Jackson and her dancers were outfitted, and its choreography, considered to "set the template for hundreds of videos to come in the 1990s and 2000s". The film premiered on MTV on September 16, 1989, coinciding with the release of the album, and was later released on VHS and LaserDisc by A&M Video. It won multiple accolades, including MTV's Video Vanguard Award for Jackson's impact on entertainment. Various actors and choreographers, including Wade Robson and Travis Payne, have cited Jackson and the "Rhythm Nation" routine as a major influence on their careers. Entertainment Weekly considered the video "legendary", and Rolling Stone included it in a list of 10 Favorite Dancing Musicians, calling Jackson "a brilliant dancer". The publication also titled it "the gold standard for dystopian dance pop music videos", featuring "some of the most memorable choreography in pop video history". The long-form video won a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video in 1990. The home video release has been certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 200,000 units. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• The Rhythm Nation Compilation (1990)
• Rhythm Nation (1989)
• Dangerous: The Short Films (1993)
• Control – The Videos (1987)
• Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour Live (2015)
• Moonwalker (1988)
• Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)
• From Janet to Damita Jo: The Videos (2004)