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Benedikt Erlingsson: "Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, they were circus artists doing their stuff live." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sigur Rós composers Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason (who worked with Björk), Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant, teaming with Lars von Trier's producer Marianne Slot (Melancholia, Antichrist, Breaking The Waves, Dancer In The Dark, Dogville, Nymphomaniac) came up, as Benedikt Erlingsson, director Of Horses And Men (Hross I Oss), spilled the beans on The Show Of Shows: 100 Years Of Vaudeville, Circuses And Carnivals (Storyville).

Frédéric Boyer with Anne-Katrin Titze: "It's what cinema did in the beginning - King Vidor and the Russians - it's exactly editing." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Robert Bresson's Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne, Christopher Walken on theatre and Michelangelo Frammartino's Alberi, Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma, and Journey To The West by Tsai Ming-liang during earlier Tribeca Film Festivals inside PS1 MoMA's Vw Dome,...

Benedikt Erlingsson shoots Anne-Katrin Titze: "I am very grateful to Frédéric Boyer and the festival to come up with this idea." Photo: Benedikt Erlingsson

In Of Horses And Men director Benedikt Erlingsson's The Show Of Shows: 100 Years Of Vaudeville, Circuses And Carnivals (Storyville), the tents go up, as he follows in the footprints of Michelangelo Frammartino's Alberi, Tsai Ming-liang's Journey To The West and Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma into the MoMA PS1 Vw Dome.

Producers Margrét Jónasdóttir and Mark Atkins Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Björk collaborators Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Vincent Lindon in Stéphane Brizé's The Measure Of A Man, Leonardo DiCaprio in Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant and Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson's Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne, Christopher Walken on theatre, A Woman At War with Lars von Trier's Melancholia producer Marianne Slot, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd,...

★★★☆☆ In an act of alchemy thoroughly appropriate to his subject matter, Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson manages to be both clear and misty-eyed about the traditions of the circus and vaudeville in new archive documentary The Show of Shows. After the interlocking segments of his wonderful feature debut Of Horses and Men, Erlingsson crafts a paean to a dying form of entertainment, fusing together carefully gathered footage of a variety of performances into several themed sections. Despite avoiding narration, the film captures a sense of heart-swelling wonder in one instant and reminds us of the darker aspects in the next. This is brilliantly assisted by an original score from Georg Holm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós, in collaboration with Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Kjartan Dagur Holm.

Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson binds archive footage together with a stunning Sigur Rós soundtrack to evoke all the fun of the fair

Created in collaboration with the National Fairground Archive, Benedikt Erlingsson’s vibrant, arresting and often disturbing documentary draws together a wealth of footage from a century of vaudeville, circuses and carnivals. From joyous clowning and spectacular stunts (high wires and human cannonballs) through the jaw-dropping exploitation of animals and children (babies being juggled, lions and tigers tormented) to interludes of delirious dance, The Show of Shows offers a kaleidoscopic history of three-ring revelry in all its many hues. Explanatory narration is eschewed in favour of an affecting score by Sigur Rós’s Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason in collaboration with Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Kjartan Dagur Hólm, which offers a clear and compelling wordless commentary.

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Benedikt Erlingsson’s strange, woozy documentary ranges across half a century of circus and fairground entertainment

The Icelandic actor and director Benedikt Erlingsson has followed his fascinating drama Of Horses and Men by curating this weird documentary clip-montage. It’s a surreal tapestry of home-movie and newsreel fragments about the secret life of circus folk and itinerant fairground entertainers in various European countries from the 20s to the 60s, accompanied by the woozily ambient music of Georg Holm and Orri Páll Dýrason from Sigur Rós.

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Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.

The Greatest Shows on Earth: A Century of Funfairs, Circuses and Carnivals will screen on opening night. Sheffield Doc/Fest has announced the line-up of its 22nd edition with two events on the June 5 night.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence will have its UK premiere at one of them. The film - which is a sequel to the award-winning The Act of Killing - sees a family who survived the genocide confront a man who killed one of their clan.

The second opening event is the world premiere of The Greatest Shows on Earth: A Century of Funfairs, Circuses and Carnivals – a music and archive film directed by Icelander Benedikt Erlingsson (Of Horses And Men) which will feature a new score by Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason from Sigur Rós and the head of the Pagan Church in Iceland, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson. It tells the story of itinerant circus performers,...

The Look of Silence and new music from members of Sigur Ros to open festival; Monty Python documentary to close.

Sheffield Doc/Fest (June 5-10) has revealed the line-up of its 2015 edition, which will open with two events.

The first is the UK premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, the follow-up to critically acclaimed The Act of Killing, in which a family that survives the genocide in Indonesia confronts the men who killed one of their brothers.

The second is the world premiere of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s The Greatest Shows on Earth: A Century of Funfairs, Circuses and Carnivals – a music and archive film that will feature a new score by Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós and the head of the Pagan Church in Iceland, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.

The film centres on the lives of travelling showpeople and has been created with exclusive access to the University of Sheffield...