Music Video
The music video for this song, directed by Floria Sigismondi – known for her work with artists such as Sigur Rós and Björk – began shooting on 21 July 1998, and first began playing in the United Kingdom, on 20 January 1999 (on Scuzz), and debuted in Canada on MuchMusic the following day.
The video depicts a spontaneous revolution by the youth. It begins with a group of school children locked inside a school, screaming "we want out!". Finally, they break through the handcuffed doors, and proceed to run around the school and surrounding area, covering various symbols of authority and luxury – including a CCTV camera, a barbecue, a boat, a car, gas pumps and eventually the town hall – with red flags. As they run through the town, more people join in. Finally, they arrive at city hall where the members of Billy Talent are performing, and which has been covered with red flags. Most children begin to mosh to the song, while others continue to run around, covering things with red flags. One of the children throws history books into the crowd, destroying them. The video ends with the children standing under a red sky, with pages of the books falling behind them, all wearing Soviet GP-5 gas masks. Voices chanting "we want out!" can also be heard at the end of the video.
This video has inspired "Teenagers", by My Chemical Romance.
Read more about this topic: Red Flag (song)
Famous quotes containing the words music and/or video:
“As if, as if, as if the disparate halves
Of things were waiting in a betrothal known
To none, awaiting espousal to the sound
Of right joining, a music of ideas, the burning
And breeding and bearing birth of harmony,
The final relation, the marriage of the rest.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)