Radiohead's Motion Picture House opens in Mexico City

Radiohead's Motion Picture House, the Kid A Mnesia installation, opened to the public at La Maravilla Studios in Mexico City on Tuesday 27 October, in the Atlampa neighbourhood. The official site and Fever, its ticket agent, give the run until 27 December, as announced earlier this month, and the official page says it cannot promise further dates for now.

The installation is open from Tuesday to Sunday, between 9:30 in the morning and 9:30 at night depending on the day, and there is a box office at the venue. The official site prices tickets from 650 to 1,150 pesos, tax included. After Mexico City the installation goes to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, from 14 January to 7 February.

At its heart is a 75-minute immersive film built on Kid A and Amnesiac, with a new mix by Nigel Godrich from the original multitrack recordings, played in six-point spatial audio. Stanley Donwood's images, sounds and creatures lurk in the corridors around it. Paintings, sketches and collages from the recording sessions are on show too. Two Spanish-language outlets credit them differently: UnoTV gives them to Thom Yorke, and Excélsior to Yorke and Donwood. UnoTV puts a visit at up to 90 minutes.

Motion Picture House in 2026 and 2027

Mexico City tickets from 650 pesos on the official site (650 to 1,150, tax included). San Francisco, 74.30 US dollars.

In the film, the Spanish-language SDP Noticias reports, a minotaur crosses surreal landscapes full of codes, creatures and memories, with no linear story. Near the end it reaches a museum, watches some bears weeping and meets a second minotaur who points the way, and the exit leads back to where the film began, at a forest and a red entrance. SDP counts 15 pieces from the two albums, in remixes and alternate versions, and names five: “Everything in Its Right Place”, “Pyramid Song”, “Idioteque”, “Motion Picture Soundtrack” and “Pulk/Pull (True Love Waits Version)”.

Ana Alvarez of Excélsior went round before the public opening. She found no assigned seats and no set route, just space to wander and get lost in while the original songs played, and compares the visit to a nightmare she did not want to end, unsettling at times and nostalgic at others.

Matthew Davis, the installation's audiovisual producer, told Excélsior that it began in 2019 as a plan for a physical exhibition for the 20th anniversary of the two albums. COVID ended that plan. In lockdown the material became an interactive video game, and later the walk-through, with Sean Evans as creative director. El mayor reto creativo fue no arruinarlo³ (“The biggest creative challenge was not to ruin it”, in our translation), Davis says, laughing. With so much material, it could all have gone wrong very quickly. Visitors pick out details in the music they had never heard before, he says, and some are moved to tears. Es como un prisma, estás mirando el álbum desde un ángulo diferente³ (“It's like a prism, you're looking at the album from a different angle”, in our translation).