Florence Welch and Vincent Haycock unveil short film ‘The Odyssey’ 

Florence Welch and director Vincent Haycock debut their short film The Odyssey today in full. The film, created for Florence + the Machine's new album How Big How Blue How Beautiful and starring Florence, will premiere today with a screening at London's Rio Cinema. A Q&A with Welch and Haycock hosted by celebrated music director A.G. Rojas, Haycock's partner in art collective MAINLINE, will follow.

The Odyssey unites each of the visual film segments created for How Big How Blue How Beautiful—"What Kind Of Man," "How Big How Blue How Beautiful," "St. Jude," "Ship To Wreck," "Queen Of Peace" and "Delilah," as well as the final installment for "Third Eye"—into a 47-minute, cohesive short film complete with new, connecting scenes.

The film will stream in full online for the first time ever tomorrow, April 21, at 7 PM BST via http://florenceandthemachine.net/, followed by a live Facebook Q&A with Florence and Haycock at 8pm BST, also hosted by Rojas.

"The Odyssey, like the epic poem by Homer, is a journey," says Haycock. "It's Florence's personal journey to find herself again after the emotional storm of a heartbreak. Like the layers of Dante's purgatory, each song or chapter represents a battle that Florence traversed and physical landscape that embodied each song or story. Its a metaphorical journey about escaping your demons, confronting yourself and returning to the original Florence, the dancer, the performer, the lover."

Following a gigantic 2015, which saw Florence release How Big How Blue How Beautiful, her third studio album which topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and also tour the globe with her universally acclaimed live show. Headline sets at both Coachella and then Glastonbury preceded a string of headline tours across the globe, selling out arenas in every corner. In May she returns to the US for a final string of headline dates before she returns home to headline her biggest London show to date – a single date at Hyde Park as part of the British Summer Time series with support coming from Kendrick Lamar, Jamie xx and many others.

"This is the finale of a very personal project that came from a conversation Vince and I had in Chateau Marmont about a year and a half ago while I was writing How Big How Blue How Beautiful," says Florence Welch. "I was talking to him about the record and the car crash of a relationship break up I was going through. The highs and the lows of love and performance, how out of control I felt, the purgatory of heartbreak, and how I was trying to change and trying to be free. And we decided we would re-tell this story in full.
We would re-claim this experience, re-imagine it and in some way perhaps I would come to understand it, to exorcise it. And so the Big Blue Odyssey began..."

Florence + The Machine headline British Summer Time @ Hyde Park on the 2nd July. Tickets are available HERE

www.florenceandthemachine.net