Bridget Riley: Painting the Line

Handling the materials and musing on how to treat or turn the wood, the metal, the paint, the wool, the words and the notes are what spark life in artists and those who experience what they express. They are the essential antidote to the Mr Gradgrinds of the world who insist we should “Never Wonder”. Film-maker Richard Watkins focuses on sculptor David Petersen, poet Harri Webb, the Welsh Brass Consort and Theatr Powys performing Emlyn Williams’ drama ‘Night Must Fall’.

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.

One winter, a pastor finds an abandoned infant on his church steps, and builds 'a drop box' to rescue any future foundlings.

A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.

It's Seattle 2006: A refugee teenager from Cambodia begins recording a video diary early in the summer to explain the meaning of "thug life." But ultimately his summer is defined by tragedy. Awarded Best Documentary at the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival 2019

Britney Spears has said that her conservatorship had become “an oppressive and controlling tool against her”. This New York Times investigation reveals much of how it worked, including an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move she made.

Fragments from a portrait of Jean-Louis Costes - sincere artist, versatile designer, poet of excess -, a man forever atoning his anguish through singing, performance, drawing and writing...

At the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York, Dr. Janos Martin helps treat patients with severe mental illness by encouraging them to express themselves through art, whether in paint, sculpture, or collage. In vivid imagery, brilliant close-ups, and delicate conversations, director Jessica Yu presents the intricate, often visionary, work of these nontraditional artists, allowing the patients to describe their approaches and processes in their own, sometimes tangled, words. With patience and calm resilience, Dr. Martin offers feedback and ideas for best methods to the individual artists, who sometimes scream or are in tears, as he helps them displace their frustrations, and demons, onto canvas. Seen as a collective, these works illustrate the fine line between creativity and distress and illuminate the healing power of expression.

A film documenting the soulful art, environments, and voices of self-taught artists on the back roads of the American South.

The first major profile of the American Pop Art cult leader after his death in 1987 covers the whole of his life and work through interviews, clips from his films, and conversations with his family and superstar friends. Andy Warhol, the son of poor Czech immigrants, grew up in the industrial slums of Pittsburgh while dreaming of Hollywood stars. He went on to become a star himself.

Seattle artist Dale Chihuly and his team test the limits of working in the glass medium as they pioneer “a new creative concept.” This documentary depicts Chihuly’s five-year creation of "Rotolo." The Italian word for coil, Rotolo is a series of large-scale sculptures twisting upward toward the sky.

A documentary about the Swedish singer Björn Afzelius, his life and work, told by interviews with friends, family and bandmates and through unique and never-seen-before archive material.

How the art in the Detroit Institute of Art connects to life's experiences and the neighborhood.

Filmed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Tate Britain, London, the exhibition reveals Sargent’s power to express distinctive personalities, power dynamics and gender identities during this fascinating period of cultural reinvention. Alongside 50 paintings by Sargent sit stunning items of clothing and accessories worn by his subjects, drawing the audience into the artist’s studio. Sargent’s sitters were often wealthy, their clothes costly, but what happens when you turn yourself over to the hands of a great artist? The manufacture of public identity is as controversial and contested today as it was at the turn of the 20th century, but somehow Sargent’s work transcends the social noise and captures an alluring truth with each brush stroke.

The personal life and professional career of music superstar Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, universally known as Sting, who became passionate about music at a very early age and founded the trio The Police in 1977 with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, achieving an immediate success.

Resistance Sahara, a haunting yet playful exploration of the liminal space between experimental, documentary, and fictive filmmaking, presents an artistic response to the Sahrawi refugee crisis from the frozen war in Western Sahara. Bringing international artists from a mix of disciplines to the Sahara Desert, and with them will create something new, a response to what they encounter. The film mix testimony from the mouths of the people who live in each zone of crisis with music; image; and symbolism. The audience is invited to reconsider their view of the nature of human suffering, and to build a new bridge of empathy with the people in these remote and sometimes forgotten places..

Short documentary of David Lynch building a lamp.

In this revealing study of Norval Morrisseau, filmed as he works among the lakes and woodlands of his ancestors, we see a remarkable Indigenous artist who emerged from a life of obscurity in the North American bush to become one of Canada's most renowned painters. Morrisseau the man is much like his paintings: vital and passionate, torn between his Ojibway heritage and the influences of the white man's world.

This remastered, rare, local production from the 80s is an unfiltered look into the mind and heart of the world-renowned folk artist Howard Finster. Walking and talking in his Paradise Garden, Finster gives insight into his visions, Faith, and artwork. He even sings and plays the banjo. Dr. George Pullen interviews Finster. And in this case, the word "interview" means that Dr. Pullen just lets Finster talk. And it's pure gold.

In Adios Amor, the discovery of lost photographs sparks the search for a hero that history forgot—Maria Moreno, a migrant mother driven to speak out by her twelve children’s hunger. Years before Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta launched the United Farm Workers, Maria picked up the only weapon she had—her voice—and became an outspoken leader in an era when women were relegated to the background. The first farm worker woman in America to be hired as a union organizer, Maria’s story was silenced and her legacy buried—until now.