Breathing Earth - Susumu Shingu's Dream

In a career spanning sixty years, Britain's absolute darling has brought his mocking nonchalance and formidable gravelly voice to every genre, from hard rock to jazz and pop. Portrait of a pop aristocrat who has managed to stay in touch with the people.

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.

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.

A childhood in boarding school, volunteered at 17 for the war and dismissed for indiscipline, thug in Marseille turned gigolo in Paris, he became actor thanks to some inspired women. Then flying high, fast and far, thanks to his director masters René Clément, Luchino Visconti & Jean-Pierre Melville.

One of a series of ‘falls’ by Bas Jan Ader that he recorded on film, this work was filmed in West Kapelle, Holland in 1970.

Ninja is famous around the world for her fierce ballroom performances, but she is not as well-known in her native country of French Guyana. But a trip home to teach a workshop might change that.

For over 170 years, Crystal Palace Park has been home to monsters. When sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins unveiled the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs to the public in 1854, they were the first ever life-sized depictions of extinct animals. Whilst hugely inaccurate according to our modern understanding, they now represent an important milestone in the history of science. They're also one of South London's most beloved and charming attractions. Over the years, the sculptures have fallen into disrepair thanks to a lack of funding, perennial vandalism and the forces of nature. But a passionate group of local residents have banded together to keep the statues standing. With the help of a world-famous rockstar, can they stop our dinosaurs from going extinct?

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.

Delacroix, d'orient et d'occident

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

A documentary about the work and personality of artist David Hockney.

Wrapped Walk Ways, in Jacob Loose Memorial Park, Kansas City, Missouri, consisted of the installation of 136,268 square feet (12,540 square meters) of saffron-colored nylon fabric covering 2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) of formal garden walkways and jogging paths.

Best known for her drawings of the ocean and the galaxies of the night sky, Vija Celmins has solidified herself as one of the most important artists of the postwar generation. Stepping back from painting in order to explore her photorealistic drawing style, Celmins creates spectacularly precise renderings of the natural world. In her forty year retrospective at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Celmins recalls her beginnings in abstraction, her choices of subject matter after freeing herself of the New York School influence, and her later immersion in what must be termed her great master drawings.

"Brice Marden: 4 Decades" follows the renowned abstract artist as he explores his acclaimed 2006 MoMA retrospective with curator Gary Garrels. Applauded for his bold and contemporary style, Marden speaks openly with Garrels about his approach, beginnings and influences. His fluid and colorful works demand attention but welcome the viewer to choose their own path within the painting itself. Marden's career is mapped out through a tour of the exhibition, as he and Garrels discuss key works of the last forty years.

"Elizabeth Murray: 4 Decades" tracks the artist's career and shows her moving forward fearlessly toward new shapes and concepts for her unique style of painting. Inspired by artists of the Abstract Expressionism movement such as Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, Murray was privy to their technique and motive. Though she may share ideals with her artistic predecessors, Murray has created miraculously original work which she discusses with curator Robert Storr as they explore her MoMA retrospective.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Still Life: Ron Mueck at Work

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

An intimate portrait of David Hockney, featuring interviews with the artist - one of Britain's most beloved painters - in London and Normandy, and exclusive new footage of a master at work.