Faces Places

Sámi artefacts from the Finnish National Museum are returning home to Sápmi, while the holy drums of the Sámi people are still imprisoned in the basements of museums across Europe. The returning objects symbolise the dignity, identity, history, connection to ancestors and a whole world view that was taken from the Sámi people. Director Suvi West takes the viewer behind the scenes of the museum world to reflect on the spirit of the objects, the inequality of cultures and the colonialist burden of museums.

Friends since high school, 20-somethings Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have an idea: a Web site for people to conduct business with municipal governments. This documentary tracks the rise and fall of govWorks.com from May of 1999 to December of 2000, and the trials the business brings to the relationship of these best friends. Kaleil raises the money, Tom's the technical chief. A third partner wants a buy out; girlfriends come and go; Tom's daughter needs attention. And always the need for cash and for improving the site. Venture capital comes in by the millions. Kaleil is on C-SPAN, CNN, and magazine covers. Will the business or the friendship crash first?

A portrait of the lives of a disparate group of patrons and employees at an American watering hole today.

They are known as "shock activists", surprising again and again with radical-provocative, often illegal art actions. Up-close insights into the work of the artist collective and the Berlin graffiti scene.

French TV host Antoine de Maximy travels the U.S. from coast to coast, relying on the hospitality of strangers and documenting his experiences with a hand-held camera.

A journey into the hearts, minds and eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Frida Kahlo - three of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists.

Castiglione d'Otranto, in the South of Italy. A group of thirty-year-olds no longer accept that the solution to the economic, ecological and political problems of the territory is always "to leave". They propose to the villagers who own pieces of uncultivated land, often felt as a burden, to put them in common. They decide to stay, to link their lives to the land and to invest in a value: being together. Castiglione becomes the village of restance. They cultivate ancient seeds and local biodiversity, they make decisions together, they develop a local economy. Accepting the shadows of the past, another potential of the place is rediscovered.

American Movie documents 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.

H*ART ON dives off the deep end of modern art. A film about the yearning to create, to mould everyday emotions into a meaningful life and, most of all, to live beyond one's death. A struggle that gets to the existential core of each of us. How do you find meaning in everyday fear, love, sex and loneliness?

La grotte Chauvet — hors du temps

Biographical account of the brilliant painter, featuring talks with Leonora Carrington during the later stage of her life in her home in Mexico.

Pop Goes the Easel was Ken Russell’s first full-length documentary for the BBC’s arts series Monitor. It focused on 4 British Pop Artists - Peter Blake, Peter Philips, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier.

Over six decades, Richard Demarco CBE, the Scottish artist and iconic promoter has brought 1000s of artists to the Edinburgh Festival and launched the careers of some of the most famous names in contemporary art. Yet today, Demarco struggles to make ends meet and is out of favour with the modern art wold. The film discusses how art has been commodified in society by dominant forces. How can society remedy the absence of art in the lives of those who feel excluded? Demarco wants to put this right before his final breath!

Gilbert Gottfried was world famous for his comedy, but most people didn't realize that he was also a very talent visual artist! Inspired by his passing in 2022, his daughter, Lily Gottfried, made a documentary short about her father's hidden talent.

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.

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 portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

Nebraska's Capitol is a national historic landmark ... a masterpiece of art and architecture, and the spirit of everything Nebraskan. Explore the enduring nature of Nebraska's statehouse and how its visionary design portrays Nebraska's people, its history, and democracy.

For over thirty summers, Mrs. Fife, an exceptional woman of our time, lived in the village of Baie-Johan-Beetz, where her great gentleness and generosity left their mark on people. This documentary is therefore intended as a tribute: it brings together both numerous testimonies and a collection of archival films and photos, signed by Mary Fife.

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.