Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Structured around the ten most significant celestial bodies of the Milky Way, Apple Pie’s inquiry begins with the furthest point in our solar system, Pluto, as a lens back towards our home planet and the ‘mechanisms by which certain aspects of scientific knowledge are digested, appropriated and subsequently manifest within the general human complex’. Christopher Francis Schiel’s dry, functional narration brings a network of ideas about our existence into focus, while Hamilton’s visual tableaux, as an extension of his multifaceted practice, veer imaginatively between psychedelic imagery and performance art.
This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art and is filled with visual references to artists of the era, including Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova.
Confronting a meter-high red cordon, Anna Uddenberg questions our social consensus: "How can a fragile piece of red fabric so easily direct the flow of human movement?" Anna Uddenberg is a Berlin-based contemporary artist. This film offers a glimpse into her first solo exhibition in China, held at Tank Shanghai. Structured in three parts—Casting, Rehearsal, and Performance—the film offers a stylised, non-linear response to Uddenberg’s sculptural language, exploring themes of bodily discipline, synthetic femininity, and ritualised consumerism.
Les Couturiers de l'Église
Follows Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar as he finds his artistic voice and develops the socially critical perspective of his work.
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.
Beijo de Borboleta
Escorted by his valet Sganarelle, Dom Juan, a libertine gentleman, brave and hypocritical, seduces women, fights duels, denies his father's authority, and mocks Heaven. Carried away by his passion for women and gambling, he goes so far as to commit perjury. A classic revisited by Mesguich with a lot of visual effects: special effects, magic tricks, imposing sets. A playful staging for this tragi-comic play.
Lifting the lid on the fascinating last decade of Andy Warhol's life and the legacy he left for future artists, through never-before-seen footage and interviews with insiders.
Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify - and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.
For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By presenting a record of this dramatic action alongside footage of its reenactment, Alÿs blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Questioning the concept of authenticity, this work demonstrates “how media can distort and dramatize the immediate reality of a moment,” the artist has said. Gallery label from Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, May 8–August 1, 2011.
Shot in Southern England over the course of six weeks by a crew of three American filmmakers, CircleSpeak offers a nuanced look at the passions and beliefs of the people immersed in the crop circle phenomenon during the season of 2001. This feature-length documentary presents interviews with serious “researchers”, self-proclaimed “hoaxers”, local farmers and villagers who are all, in one way or another, involved in this strange and compelling summer spectacle taking place year after year.
A pioneering force in feminist art for more than four decades, Judy Chicago paved the way for generations of women artists. She decided to join forces with Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova to inspire people to imagine a different, more humane world.
Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, including market darlings George Condo, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, this documentary examines the role of art and artistic passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society.
Documentary about the not-likely-legendary Portuguese art group from the 1980's.
Documentation of Lygia Pape’s 1968 performance Divisor - reactivated in the city of Villeurbanne (France) in October 2014. Commissioned by Institut d'Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes.
An obsessively-made documentary, filmed over 16 years, exploring the creative life and adventures of the eccentric artist and entrepreneur Harrod Blank. From his youth growing up in the woods with chickens and working as a camera assistant for his father- the venerable film-maker Les Blank- to the creation of his first attention-getting artcar, to his current multi-faceted career as creator and head of a nationwide art car movement, all the while pursuing his visions of non-conformity. Featuring interviews with his girl-friends, his mom, his brother, his raconteur lifelong pal, Kevin, as well as Blank’s own painful yet hilarious self-examinations. With special appearances by Les Blank and many fine art car artists. “The pressure to conform is incredible, ” says Blank, “but I don’t care what other people think. The reason I’m alive is to create.”
Parres is a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City, halfway to Cuernavaca. It is a town in passing that has left immutable and imperceptible traces on the highway. A man paint the screen covering the town. The series is composed of three videos.