Museum Town

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

This film documents Kutlug Ataman's artistic production in a retrospective approach and elucidates his works with his own words and with commentaries by curators, art institution directors, art historians and critics who are familiar with his production through close collaboration, to witness the construction of an impressive artistic production spanning 15 years. The film also includes the excerpts from the artworks and the installation footages of their realization.

Painter Françoise Gilot shared Pablo Picasso's life from 1943 to 1953. This union nourished their respective artistic creations.

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

Documents the true story of the final weeks of rehearsal for the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, and many of whom must overcome health adversities to participate. Their music goes against the stereotype of their age group. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing new songs for a concert in their hometown.

Loïe Fuller, stage name of Marie Louise Fuller: the American actress and dancer trained in burlesque, circuses and variety shows who, in the 1890s, signed by the Folies Bergère of Paris, became a star. She was portrayed by Toulouse-Lautrec, loved by the symbolists, the inspiration for Art Nouveau, in her shows she combined dance, spirals of fabric and light, reflected from behind or from below through the glass floor that she had created. She transformed into the "Fairy of Light", was taken up (especially in her Serpentine Dance) by Georges Méliès and Alice Guy and influenced René Clair's early films.

Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1977 to 2008, guides viewers through The Cloisters, pointing out Romanesque and Gothic architecture and artwork, beautiful tapestries, and the diverse species in the gardens. He outlines the history of the building and it's many influences and highlights significant works of art in the collection. It was produced in 1989 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Office of Film and Television.

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.

Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

Documents 18 months in the lives of three crack addicts in Lowell, Massachusetts.

In 1937 the Nazi regime held two exhibitions in Munich: one to stigmatize “Degenerate Art” (which they systematically looted and destroyed) and one, personally curated by Hitler, to glorify “Classic Art”. This immersive new documentary reveals the Nazi’s complicated relationship with classical and modern art, displaying an incredible number of masterpieces by Botticelli, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Chagall, Renoir and Gauguin amongst others, intertwined with human stories from the most infamous period of the twentieth century. A state-of-the-art detective story exploring the Nazis’ obsession with creative expression, Hitler versus Picasso combines history, art and human drama for an unforgettable cinema experience.

An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.

Manet is one of the main candidates for the title of the most important artist there has been. As the reluctant father of Impressionism, and the painter of Dejeuner sur l'herbe, he can probably be accused of inventing modern art. But his story is fascinating on many other levels. As a piece of compelling biography, Manet's is the unlikely tale of the stubborn son of the most highly placed judge in France who decides to become an artist and embarrass his father. The resulting family tensions are the stuff of legend. Then there was Manet's dramatic private life, including exotic romantic affairs and a particularly horrible death. Always cited as the father of the Impressionists, Manet stubbornly refused to show with them, and was careful to maintain an aesthetic distance from Monet, Renoir and the others. While they worshipped him, he looked down on them.

Lucy Jarvis -- the plucky camerawoman known for becoming the first Westerner to film inside communist China -- breaks barriers once again with this exclusive look at the world-famous Musée du Louvre, a place that previously barred access to all filmmakers. Charles Boyer is your host on this personalized tour of the museum's most prized possessions, including works by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Vermeer and Van Eyck.

A bike messenger, an electrician, a postal worker, a business man and an office worker make their way through an evening in New York City. A collection of eight large-scale moving images projected on the walls of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

What happens when a group of international artists travel to North Korea to create art like the regime have never seen before? While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in a creative exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where abstract art is forbidden.

Chronicles the creation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's most attended fashion exhibition in history, "China: Through The Looking Glass," an exploration of Chinese-inspired Western fashions by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton.

Actor Jeremy Irons embarks on an epic journey through the halls of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, two hundred years after its inauguration, along corridors where thousands of masterpieces of all time tell the lives of rulers and common people, and tales about times of war and madness and times of peace and happiness; because, as Goya said, imagination, the mother of the arts, produces impossible monsters, but also unspeakable wonders.

Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?