Kanye West makes avant garde directorial debut

Just when you thought things couldn't get any weirder in the world of Kanye West, the rapper has premiered a 35-minute video about a man who falls in love with a phoenix.

West's directorial debut, called Runaway after a song from his forthcoming album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was shot on location in Prague and features the Victoria's Secret model Selita Ebanks as the be-feathered love interest.

Featuring dancers from the Czech National Theatre and a references to Mozart and Greek mythology, the surreal video is thought to be a build-up to the release of his new album on November 22.

"It's the story of a phoenix fallen to Earth, and I make her my girlfriend, and people discriminate against her and eventually she has to burn herself alive and go back to her world," he told New York magazine

"I've been feeling the idea of the phoenix. It's been in my heart for a while. It's maybe parallel to my career. I threw a Molotov cocktail on my career last year, in a way, and I had to come back as a better person."

West made the film during the 'gap year' he took to recover from the aftermath of his mortifying stage invasion during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the Video Music Awards in 2009.

It is the second time Kanye has been involved with a film piece after a collaborative effort with Spike Jonze last year, in which the eccentric rapper was shown to cut open his stomach and pull out a gremlin. ·