London-based designer Georgina Johnson, founder of womenswear brand Laundry Service, unveils her experimental response to The Photographers' Gallery's current exhibition, Four Saints in Three Acts: A Snapshot of the American Avant-garde. The director's source material is the 1933 American Modernist Opera; a work which dismantled conventions with its experimental narrative and all-black cast, who were recruited from the nightclubs of Harlem.

Sacredness limns the edges of the film. American poet Gertrude Stein—who wrote the original libretto for the opera—was fascinated with saints and the seeming holiness of an artist's work. Johnson's characters pray and are prayed to, holy figures performing enigmatic rituals. She asks, "If i prayed to any saints, who would they be?"

Johnson's self-directed film—which features a new, original score—pulls apart the aesthetics and visual politics of this atypical opera through her own, experimental approach. It is a critique—not a pure homage.