Writer and artist Matthew Collings reveals the use of light by artist JMW Turner, through a biography of the artist's life-long fascination with the River Thames, London.
Social & External
Self
Florida, 1994. Artist Mike Diana is convicted on an obscenity charge in the wake of an undercover police officer purchasing his limited edition zine Boiled Angel. Here is the very unusual story of what led to this First Amendment debacle happening for the first time in the United States.
Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.
Follows the behind-the-scenes work of Studio Ghibli, focusing on the notable figures Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki.
The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. In these postmodern days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid. Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.
The humorous portrait of a female artist. The film follows the career of 24-year-old Janine F. who in 2002 caused a commotion from the rooftop of a Berlin building.
Functions without theaters, murals without walls, clothes without fabrics and students without schools says the necessary about the state abandonment and but also talent and creativity of Colombians, which it has nothing to lose. The documentary tells the story of the beginnings and resilience of several artist from Barranquilla in different disciplines in continuing to maintain and diversify the living culture, that remain to exist.
This film tells the story of Markus Anatol Weisse, who, astonishingly enough, became an artist, in spite of being only very partially sighted. Markus also builds strange machine-like beings and wishes that he himself were a biological robot, or cyborg.
This award-winning documentary looks at the life and times of Judith Deim, an artist and musician who gained an international reputation for her expressive paintings and her friendships with the likes of John Steinbeck and Garcia Lorca, and who also influenced many of her children and grandchildren to take up lives in the arts.
Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.
A stop motion/collaged based independent short film plays with the recontextualisation of memories and how time distorts them.
The 25-minute long documentary details the entirety of the artistic process from Ralph Ziman’s inspiration for the project and acquisition of the MiG-21, to the international collaboration to create the beadwork and assemble the art piece, leading up to the project’s unveiling at The Museum of Flight. Also covered in the film is background on the MiG-21, including details about the plane used (decommissioned tail number 8971) and how MiGs’ presence in the Angolan Civil War ultimately hastened the end of white rule in South Africa. See historical footage and personal interviews, including the Polish pilot who flew tail number 8971 in the 1980s, a South African Border War pilot and the team of artists and craftspeople in Southern Africa and the United States who took on the huge task of covering the aircraft in tens of millions of glass beads.
Impassivity and silence are Mads Mikkelsen's trademarks, and roles without reply his specialty. His sculptural allure is such that his mere presence takes on a dramatic dimension. For him, everything starts with the body. It's his main working tool, which he shapes and engages for each film. For the majority of world audiences, the Danish actor remains associated with his "villain" characters in Hollywood blockbusters - Casino Royale, Doctor Strange, Hannibal, Fantastic Beasts... Yet he finds with uncommon ease a balance between major American film franchises and more modest, confidential independent films. If the actor manages to move from one universe to another without being stereotyped, it's because he has a very physical - thanks to his former career as a gymnast - and pragmatic approach to his art.
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.
A documentary edited from ORLAN's seventh surgery in the The Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN series which aired live, vis satellite from New York in 1993.
The New Modernists: Folds, Blobs and Boxes, Architecture in the Digital Era approaches the topic of artistic technological advances, and the modern architects who were educated with this new influx of electronic techniques. In this detailed portrait we visit the exhibition entitled Folds, Blobs + Boxes at the Carnegie Museum of Art where ten architect/designers discuss their approaches to digital architecture with curator of the exhibition, Joseph Rosa. By abandoning the traditional notions of aesthetic beauty, scale and proportion, a new freedom has formed amongst these contemporary creators.
Up until the end of her life, Beatrice Wood continued to influence younger artists with her definitive, free-wheeling ways. She was central to the American Dada movement and was the last surviving member of this group. In this program she recalls her friends Man Ray, Picabia and others, and her ex-husband Marcel Duchamp. She died in 1999 at 105 years of age.
Art in glorious motion. Bright, colourful and often intensely dynamic, the 1970 'Kinetics' show at London's Hayward Gallery was a major international showcase of the new active sculptural art. Works by Jean Tinguely, Nam June Paik, Peter Logan, Takis, Jesus Raphael Soto and many others dazzled a wide-eyed public. This priceless film record of the show captures a kaleidoscope of neon lights, rotating metal, squirting water and stroboscopic projections. Director Lutz Becker, of the Slade School of Art Film Unit - who would go on to direct Double-Headed Eagle (1973), a documentary account of Hitler's rise to power - uses a variety of textural, electronic sounds (courtesy of Peter Sahla) to evoke the unusual experience. The show was enormously popular, with visitors filling out the gallery day after day.
The genesis of To Open Eyes: A Film on Josef Albers developed from Arnold Bittleman's appreciation for Albers while Bittleman was a student at Yale University in the 1960s. Wanting to preserve Albers’s teaching method—learning by doing—Bittleman set out with filmmaker and editor Carl Howard to make a visual record of Albers teaching students how to see and use color as a visual grammar. The film includes archival footage of Josef Albers at home in conversation with Bittleman, as well as footage from Black Mountain College and Yale University.
Belgian art historian and filmmaker Paul Haesaerts (1901–1974) made a significant contribution to the promotion of modern Flemish art. In the late 1940s, he started experimenting with the medium of film to practice a new form of lens-based art criticism. The understudied documentary "Quatre peintres belges au travail" (1952) presents Belgian artists Edgar Tytgat, Albert Dasnoy, Jean Brusselmans and Paul Delvaux at work in their studio. On a large sheet of glass placed in front of the camera, they each paint one of the seasons that also represent a stage in a person’s life. A close reading of this Kodachrome color film sheds light on the context of mid-century art reproductions, mass media and post-war Flemish culture. It also examines in what way this film operates as Haesaerts’s concept of cinéma critique, while raising questions as to the way Haesaerts attempted to reconcile the spatial art of painting with the temporal medium of film.
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
A tribute to Chadwick Boseman, celebrating his life and legacy.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
After the high-profile killing of Damilola Taylor, Cornelius' family move out of London. But when they discover their new town is run by racists, Cornelius takes a drastic step to survive.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
Supersonic charts the meteoric rise of Oasis from the council estates of Manchester to some of the biggest concerts of all time in just three short years. This palpable, raw and moving film shines a light on one of the most genre and generation-defining British bands that has ever existed and features candid new interviews with Noel and Liam Gallagher, their mother, and members of the band and road crew.
Photographer Estevan Oriol and artist Mister Cartoon turned their Chicano roots into gritty art, impacting street culture, hip hop and beyond.
An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
JB Smoove and Martin Starr host a celebration of 20 years of "Spider-Man" movies, from the Sam Raimi trilogy to Marc Webb's movies and the trio from Jon Watts.
Everyone thinks that Bob Kane created Batman, but that’s not the whole truth. One author makes it his crusade to make it known that Bill Finger, a struggling writer, actually helped invent the iconic superhero, from concept to costume to the very character we all know and love. Bruce Wayne may be Batman’s secret identity, but his creator was always a true mystery.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
An intimate journey through the formative years of David Lynch's life. From his idyllic upbringing in small town America to the dark streets of Philadelphia, we follow Lynch as he traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic directors.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
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 portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
