Artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The pair used found objects to construct a complex, interdependent contraption in an empty warehouse. When set in motion, a domino-like chain reaction ripples through the complex of imaginative devices. Fire, water, the laws of gravity, and chemistry determine the life-cycle of the objects. The process reveals a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, and improbability and precision, in an extended science project that will mesmerize the mind.
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.
An intimate portrait of Christopher Alexander, a critic of modern architecture on a lifelong quest to build harmonious, livable places in today’s world. The film tells the story of two projects – a spectacular high school in Japan and an innovative homeless shelter in California. For Alexander, feelings come first, users are deeply engaged and process is paramount. We discover what happens when an architect’s unconventional method collides with standard practices in his profession.
A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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.
About the history of the Dominican Republic's visual arts from the perspective of color given by the incidence of light in the island, alongside the historical events that defined its master artists.
A history of Bucharest, as seen in the light of the totalitarian architecture, having as leading idea the reality that the Power always exposes its purposes through architecture. After five decades of communism, the reality on thee Dark Ages is still waiting to be revealed, and architecture is one of the most obvious embodiments of the ideology to whom it was builtÉ It is not a movie about faults or about guilty peoples, but about official edifices of thee communist Romania and their story.
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.
An old hostel, located in the center of Porto, served for many years as a hostel for people with few possessions, prostitutes and people passing through who made that place a more or less prolonged residence.
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.
A stop motion/collaged based independent short film plays with the recontextualisation of memories and how time distorts them.
A film essay investigating the question of what “the West” means beyond the cardinal direction: a model of society inscribed itself in the Federal Republic of Germany’s postwar history and architecture. The narrator shifts among reflections on modern architecture and property relations, detailed scenes from childhood, and a passed-down memory of a “hemmed-in West Germany,” recalling the years of her parents’ membership in a 1970s communist splinter group.
What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.
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.
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.
In this dynamic and dramatic short film, an African American veteran takes us on an extraordinary journey through his life. From a chance visit to the Pentagon, to growing up in a vibrant integrated neighborhood, his story is one of resilience and inspiration. Fueled by the determination to seize educational opportunities, he enlists just in time to experience the racial divisions of his era before Truman desegregates the military. Thrust into the brutality of the Korean War, the weight of combat becomes an indelible part of his soul. Returning home, he embarks on a new path as an architect and discovers unexpected connections in far-off Pakistan. As his family expands, his sons reflect on the man who raised them and the legacy he instilled. This film unearths the essence of the Black experience in the early 20th century, paints a vivid portrait of the Chosin Reservoir, and unravels the intricate tapestry of race, family, and personal growth.