The story of one of Australia's greatest 20th century painters, incorporating rich archive material including rare interviews with Smart and his long-term partner Ermes De Zan.
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Self (archive)
Self
As one of the most successful independent comic book creators, Mike Mignola has inspired generations of writers and artists. This feature-length documentary explores the legacy of the legendary comic book creator behind Hellboy, and delves into Mignola's career from his early days at Marvel, to his success with Hellboy, featuring insights from Neil Gaiman on the Mignolaverse and Rebecca Sugar on Mignola's influence on Steven Universe.
Using never-before-seen archival footage, personal photos, first-person narratives, and cutting-edge, mouth-watering food cinematography, the film traces Julia Child's surprising path, from her struggles to create and publish the revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) which has sold more than 2.5 million copies to date, to her empowering story of a woman who found fame in her 50s, and her calling as an unlikely television sensation.
Andrew Marr interviews David Hockney about his exhibition A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy, made up of works depicting the landscape of his native Yorkshire.
A profile of writer-director Billy Wilder
French pop diva Dalida candidly discusses a number of the songs that made her a phenomenal success across Europe, the Middle East and Japan in this celluloid chronicle of the beguiling singer. Dalida -- who earned 45 gold records -- talks about "J'attendrai," "Besame Mucho," "Paroles Paroles" and other hits. The video also includes previously unreleased pictures shot in exotic locales and footage spanning the singer's 30-year career.
When the cameras rolled, Doris Day wore a happy face, never hinting at the pain she endured in her personal life. This documentary brings viewers close to the real Doris Day through the eyes of her friends and family members and with the help of film footage, newsreels and photographs. What surfaces is a complex picture of an equally complicated woman who faced problems far more formidable than her cinematic image revealed.
Light is a fascinating phenomenon. Without light, there would be no cinema, no film – and no life. So light is at the origin of everything, and yet it remains invisible to the eye until it hits matter. This moment is – quite literally – the starting point of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s latest work, for the springtime spectacle of rainbow shreds in the cinematographer and documentary filmmaker’s flat became the starting point of a search for the origin of the images we form of this world. For this quest he dived deep into two spheres that seem to follow different laws but always strive to fathom the magical: physics and art.
The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life poetically narrates the story of a community of Iranian Americans who have made the San Francisco Bay Area their home over the past five decades. The film explores Iranian immigration through turbulent histories of dissent, revolution, war, and separation, and the reinvention of identity in a new land and culture. The Dawn is Too Far highlights how Iranian students, activists, and artists have navigated displacement while drawing on and influencing Bay Area culture. This community offers a more nuanced story of the Iranian diaspora—the ways that this community enriches the region where they live, work, and build families. The Dawn is Too Far undermines the tired and overplayed news headlines that are dominated by narratives of enmity and mistrust between the government of Iran and the U.S., to offer a more humane understanding of the how people's lives and the sacrifices they make are part of the larger story of immigration.
The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.
In 1972, officer Frank Serpico exposes the corruption which poisons the roots of the NYPD and becomes famous in 1973 when director Sidney Lumet tells his story in the classic film “Serpico,” starring Al Pacino.
To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.
It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform one man into a national sensation and iconic fairy-tale character. His name: Petrus Gonsalvus, more commonly known today as the hairy hero of Beauty and the Beast.
The 1960s was an extraordinary time for the United States. Unburdened by post-war reparations, Americans were preoccupied with other developments like NASA, the game-changing space programme that put Neil Armstrong on the moon. Yet it was astronauts like Eugene Cernan who paved the uneven, perilous path to lunar exploration. A test pilot who lived to court danger, he was recruited along with 14 other men in a secretive process that saw them become the closest of friends and adversaries. In this intensely competitive environment, Cernan was one of only three men who was sent twice to the moon, with his second trip also being NASA’s final lunar mission. As he looks back at what he loved and lost during the eight years in Houston, an incomparably eventful life emerges into view. Director Mark Craig crafts a quietly epic biography that combines the rare insight of the surviving former astronauts with archival footage and otherworldly moonscapes.
Barbra Streisand grew up in working class Brooklyn, dreaming of escape from her tough childhood. A stellar student, she resisted the pressure to go to college as her sights were firmly set on Broadway. She was determined to become an actress and landed her first role aged 16, but it was two years later, when she started to sing, that her career took off. Subverting stereotypes and breaking glass ceilings, this programme looks at her rise to stardom and the remarkable achievements of her early career.
Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.
Presents life in 18th century Spain as the painter Francisco de Goya showed it to us.
Documentary that reconstructs the professional life of the dancer through the thread of his own voice. A work that travels to the fundamental landscapes of the personal history of Gades with unpublished documents and the testimony of those who shared with him many pages of the book of his life and the history of Spanish dance in recent decades.
A story about the unorthodox life of the groundbreaking Swedish journalist and author Ester Blenda Nordström (1891-1948). In a very restrictive time for women she travelled the world, always returning to her secret love, Carin, in Stockholm.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.
The extraordinary story of the planet’s most famous contemporary scientist, told in his own words and by those closest to him. Made with unique access to Hawking’s private life, this is an intimate and moving journey into Stephen's world, both past and present.
Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15 year adventure as James Bond. Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
20 years after Calvin and Hobbes stopped appearing in daily newspapers, filmmaker Joel Allen Schroeder has set out to explore the reasons behind the comic strip's loyal and devoted following.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Vivian Maier's photos were seemingly destined for obscurity, lost among the clutter of the countless objects she'd collected throughout her life. Instead these images have shaken the world of street photography and irrevocably changed the life of the man who brought them to the public eye. This film brings to life the interesting turns and travails of the improbable saga of John Maloof's discovery of Vivian Maier, unravelling this mysterious tale through her documentary films, photographs, odd collections and personal accounts from the people that knew her. What started as a blog to show her work quickly became a viral sensation in the photography world. Photos destined for the trash heap now line gallery exhibitions, a forthcoming book and this documentary film.
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
An intense portrait of the iconic filmmaker, writer, actor, comedian and musician Woody Allen: his life, family and friends; his writing and directing habits, and his relationship with performers.
A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
Nine filmmakers each profile a young girl from a different part of the world to weave a global tapestry of youth in the 21st century.
The story of the triumphs and hurdles of brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb, otherwise known as the Bee Gees. The iconic trio, who found early fame in the 1960s, went on to write over 1,000 songs and have 20 No. 1 hits throughout their career, transcending more than five decades of changing tastes and styles.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.