Josiah McElheny

How can an artist discover abstraction by the beginning of the 20th century and nobody is noticing? A woman, misjudged and concealed, rocks the art world with her mind-blowing oeuvre. Hilma af Klint was a pioneer creating her first abstract painting in 1906, four years before Vassily Kandinsky. But why was she ignored? Why are her paintings not available on the market? This first film on her is about her life and work, the role of women in art history and the discovery of an art scandal. Her quest for meaning in life and a boundless thinking led into a timeless, outstanding oeuvre.

An experimental portrait of the New York gallerist and publisher Christine Burgin told through her Borgesian library of strange and visionary books by such eclectic figures as Dinshah Ghadiali, Eva Carrière, Charles Ford, Richard Shaver, and Wilhelm Reich. Seen through 16mm film, VHS tape, 35mm slide sources as well as the full spectrum of visible color, A Secret World invites us into a self-contained universe of mystical, even crackpot thinking and imagining, as Burgin's longtime friends and "documentarians" Jeff Preiss and Josiah McElheny leaf through "images of lost Atlantis found in a rock, perpetual motion machines or manifested ectoplasm in historic performances." – Museum of Modern Art