A travelogue celebrating the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition and highlighting its exhibition of classical paintings and stunning lighting effects.
Michael Palin travels to France in search of the Mediterranean view on his wall, captured by his favourite artist, Scottish painter Anne Redpath. He travels from a London bank, via a chateau in Cap Ferrat and a monastery in Edinburgh.
Artist Chris Berens finds his inspiration in his own magical inner world. The animals and creatures that play a major role in his imagination also populate the landscapes he creates with his special painting technique. It results in scenes that are both enchanting and ominous.
Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.
This flipbook-style animation demonstrates the emotions of people who hear voices
The story of one of Australia's greatest 20th century painters, incorporating rich archive material including rare interviews with Smart and his long-term partner Ermes De Zan.
The true identity of Perth's enigmatic Walking Man is revealed through a compelling investigation in the lead up to the unknown artist's debut exhibition after his untimely death.
Experimental video art shot in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle
Jan receives the group patch at the campfire, Herkules brews up some tea in the workshop and Sidney gets a mohawk haircut done by his father. The film shows fragments from an Oberhausen subculture in which symbols and practices of the outlaw motorbiker scene are transferred to cycling.
Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.
'No Free Walls' is an in-depth look at Brooklyn's changing landscape, through the eyes of Joseph Ficalora, the founder and inadvertent art curator of the Bushwick Collective art project.
Klaus Kinski has perhaps the most ferocious reputation of all screen actors: his volatility was documented to electrifying effect in Werner Herzog’s 1999 portrait My Best Fiend. This documentary provides further fascinating insight into the talent and the tantrums of the great man. Beset by hecklers, Kinski tries to deliver an epic monologue about the life of Christ (with whom he perhaps identifies a little too closely). The performance becomes a stand-off, as Kinski fights for control of the crowd and alters the words to bait his tormentors. Indispensable for Kinski fans, and a riveting introduction for newcomers, this is a unique document, which Variety called ‘a time capsule of societal ideals and personal demons.’
Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.
Leonardo da Vinci is not just the most famous and most admired of all painters - he is an icon, a superstar. Yet, the man himself remains elusive. Accounts during his lifetime describe a man too handsome, too strong, too perfect to be accurate. But in 2009, the chance discovery in the South of Italy of an ancient portrait with strangely familiar features takes the art world by storm. Could this be an unknown self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci? Controversy erupts among the experts. The implications of such a discovery have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the work of this great Renaissance master.
Pierre Bismuth hires a private detective and a duo of screenwriters to investigate on an enigmatic artwork.
A documentary about the German-American movie poster artist Will Williams made by his close friend Eckhard "Ecki" Baum.
Directors Jonathan Alter, John Block and Steve McCarthy bring New York columnists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill’s courageous writing to life, celebrating the acclaimed journalists and the city they loved.
Charlton Heston tells the fascinating story of the intertwining of Andrew Wyeth's biography and art. He discusses themes of regeneration and fertility. An overview of Wyeth's place in contemporary art.
American Movie is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.
To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.