Canada Vignettes: Bill Reid

Since its opening in 1948, The Farnsworth Art Museum has been a source of community pride and a beacon that draws visitors to Rockland each year. Told through first person interviews with Rockland natives and residents, historical photographs and footage, the film follows the museum’s growth from the reading of Lucy Farnsworth’s will, through the construction of the museum facility, to the internationally renowned institution that it is today.

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.

An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

The film explores the role of photography, since its rudimentary beginnings in the 1840s, in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present. The dramatic arch is developed as a visual narrative that flows through the past 160 years to reveal black photography as an instrument for social change, an African American point-of-view on American history, and a particularized aesthetic vision.

Stan Hill Jr. is a Haudenosaunee artist living in Miawpukek First Nation Reserve, Conne River, Newfoundland. In “The Bear Inside a Whale,” he and his family discuss racism, identity, religion, creation and art, along with the cultural extinction of the Beothuk of Newfoundland. Throughout the film, we follow Stan carving a bear out of a whale vertebra. And we visit The Rooms (museum) in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Stan talks about viewing and reclaiming Indigenous artefacts.

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.

A worn-out floor, the hole underneath, a political activist, and the Ouled Sbita tribe are the protagonists in this political satire. For 23 years, the director’s chair at an international art institute scratched the wooden floor. This 102cm x 120cm floor section is cut out and sent to an expropriated piece of land in Morocco. In The Hole’s Journey, Ghita Skali uses sharp wit, personal stories and playful editing to touch on specific power dynamics and freedom of choice.

A tiny fragment of an actuality film of Tom Merry (William Mechem), a 'lightning sketch' caricaturist performing his act for the camera and producing a large profile caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The loss of the rest of the film has bequeathed us 6 seconds that are of Mechem standing next to the completed portrait and sadly, that is all there is. An early film made by Birt Acres for R.W. Paul. (see release information for further detail).

The TNO (Unorganized Territory) Lac-Boisbouscache is a 150 square kilometer public forest located in the Lower St. Lawrence region of Quebec, Canada. Through the eyes of the forest's residents and users, the film paints a portrait of a territory that has long been coveted by private groups with diverse interests. Boisbouscache is a story of dispossession based on current commercial uses combined with the absence of any political will.

An unconventional portrait of painter Frida Kahlo and photographer Tina Modotti. Simple in style but complex in its analysis, it explores the divergent themes and styles of two contemporary and radical women artists working in the upheaval of the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.

Julie Mendez was a 17 year old teenager when she saw the "be all that you can be" Army recruiting messaging and decided to enlist. Her life would change forever when she was deployed to serve in the Iraq War. Her experiences changed her and she returned home to face feelings of isolation and depression. Always a creative person, Julie turned to art to help her process her experiences and begin to heal her PTSD.

The De Mol van Otterloo couple has the most important and largest private collection 17th-century Dutch and Flemish masters in the world. They collected from Ruisdael, Steen, Dou, Cuyp, Potter, Lievens, Hals and yes, also a Rembrandt. There is millions of masterpieces on the walls of their villa in Massachusetts. But what do you do with such a collection? Together with the friendly couple Weatherbie, who also built up a special art collection, they decide that their collections should stay together after their death. The result is an art gift that is unparalleled.

Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.

This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.

Exhibition on Screen's latest release celebrates the life and masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch brought together from around the world to his hometown in the Netherlands as a one-off exhibition. With exclusive access to the gallery and the show, this stunning film explores this mysterious, curious, medieval painter who continues to inspire today's creative geniuses. Over 420,000 people flocked to the exhibition to marvel at Bosch's bizarre creations but now, audiences can enjoy a front row seat at Bosch's extraordinary homecoming from the comfort of their own home anywhere in the world. Expert insights from curators and leading cultural critics explore the inspiration behind Bosch's strange and unsettling works. Close-up views of the curiosities allow viewers to appreciate the detail of his paintings like never before. Bosch's legendary altarpieces, which have long been divided among museums, were brought back together for the exhibition and feature in the film.

A visit to the "Indians of Canada" pavilion at Expo 67, Montréal. Inside there are Indigenous artifacts, but even more arresting are the printed placards that tell the story of the Indigenous peoples in North America, written without rancor but recalling what their contact with European settlers has cost in freedom of movement, in loss of land, and in loss of health of body and spirit.

A moving portrait of actress Tantoo Cardinal, travelling through time and across the many roles she’s played, capturing her strength and her impact—and how she shattered the glass ceiling and survived.

Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.

Narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi - star of the landmark television series "I, Claudius" - this documentary explores art and culture around the Bay of Naples before Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. The bay was then the most fashionable destination for vacationing Romans. Julius Caesar, emperors, and senators were among those who owned sumptuous villas along its shores. Artists flocked to the region to create frescoes, sculpture, and luxurious objects in gold, silver, and glass for villa owners as well as residents of Pompeii and other towns in the shadow of Vesuvius. The film concludes with the story of the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum from the 18th century onward.

The Kabul National Museum, once known as the "face of Afghanistan," was destroyed in 1993. We filmed the most important cultural treasures of the still-intact museum in 1988: ancient Greco-Roman art and antiquitied of Hellenistic civilization, as well as Buddhist sculpture that was said to have mythology--the art of Gandhara, Bamiyan, and Shotorak among them. After the fall of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, some seventy percent of the contents of the museum was destroyed, stolen, or smuggled overseas to Japan and other countries. The movement to return these items is also touched upon. The footage in this video represents that only film documentation of the Kabul Museum ever made.