BNK48 1st Generation Concert Dan'1ion
This film is dedicated to Maria Lai, an artist born in 1919 in Ulassai, Sardinia. Surrounded and inspired by the ogliastra countryside, the cyclopic guardian of plots and landslides, Maria Lai uses inert materials like stone, concrete, asphalt, metal and wood to work old and new legends into librettos of individual works, installations and interventions, thus becoming part of the landscape that calls to her. In making this film the authors have confided in the artist’s role as a spokeperson, and it is as if one is listening to the voice of a wild olive tree - both millenary and contemporary - a voice that knows what to say (and can say whatever it wants) from beyond the boundaries of reality, history, nature and art. As that tree, the artist - confident of her roots - with a sound sense of rhythm and scansion, multiplies big and small stories, just as she did with the bread and fish in Santa Barbara di Ulassai along the way to the country church.
An indie documentary exploring the art form of hand-drawn animation through a contemporary lens in the digital era. Featuring insights and anecdotes by hand-drawn animation artists from around the world.
A young artist struggles to find purpose after his plans seemingly screech to a halt.
Algerian director Hamid Benamra turns his focus to Mustapha Boutadjine, a charming, mercurial collage artist in Paris whose very work methods embody resistance, and celebrate those who work to liberate others. Boutadjine creates his portraits of Third World artists such as Miriam Makeba, and Algerian figures such as Assia Djebar from pieces of paper torn from high end fashion magazines and other, glossy, glitzy publications. Using this material is as much an act of rejecting bourgeois standards, which are often anti-North African in France, as much as elevating these figures and making them the social and visual standard against which we should judge ourselves, not the runway models of Chanel.
"Idols" have become a representative part of Japanese culture. This film is a documentary that delves into the undiscovered "underside of idols". SKE48 was established in July 2008 in Sakae, Nagoya, as the first group of AKB48's national expansion. SKE48 was the forerunner of the 48 Project, which later expanded nationwide and then worldwide. The group is full of girls who are trying to make their dreams as idols come true. The film portrays in graphic detail the emotions of these girls who have foregone an ordinary girl's life to choose the profession of an "idol".
It is difficult to characterize Slobodan Tišma. He is unique and versatile. He wanders with joy throughout the artistic landscape, drawing it with his words since the early sixties. He started as a poet, he was a conceptualist, an "invisible artist" and a rock musician ("Luna"/"La Strada"- former Yugoslav New Wave bands). Currently, he is a prose writer, and sometimes he engages in minimalistic performances. Wearing different masks he moved from one artistic space to another breaking the stereotypes and creating an aesthetic phenomenon out of his own existence. His mainstay is margin. Through trees and ocean he communicates with the universe. He loves the game of seeking, and hiding again. He is a persistent walker. With his silent steps he pops up daily in the corners of Novi Sad, searching for his own pleasure. Similar to his writings, this film has no formal completeness and comprehensiveness. It wonders who Slobodan Tišma is.
Artist, musician and art magazine publisher Noah Becker gives us an art world insider's view of New York based contemporary art in 2011. Important New York based curators, critics and auction houses lend their views on New York's relevance as an international art scene in relation to globalized culture. Other topics include art value and how contemporary art is presented to the public through pop culture and the media. Featuring interviews with art world figures including Lee Ranaldo, Richard Phillips, Michael Halsband, Spencer Tunick, Bibbe Hansen, Bill Powers and Richard Butler. Musical performances by Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth with additional music by Moka Only and Noah Becker.
David Hockney is unquestionably one of the most passionate and versatile experimental artists on the contemporary scene. In the late 1970s the British artist developed a pioneering concept which also changed his perspective on painting – his “joiners”. In this film, the artist himself talks about this photographic approach, a kind of Cubism-inspired photocollage which explores the space-time continuum. Hockney allows the viewer to share in the creative “joiner” process and leads us step by step into the universe of his artistic creativity.
In the middle of the French Alps, some adventurers balance themselves on slacklines high above the ground.
On September 15th 2008, the day of the the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £60 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemporary art bubble, the greatest rise in the financial value of art in the history of the world. One art critic and film-maker was banned by Sotheby’s and Hirst from attending this historic auction: Ben Lewis.
Four theme songs narrate the make of fictional idol Kirita Yumiko from early days of singing and dancing lessons to the triumphant debut concert.
Hindu temples at Benares and Belur and the mythologies associated with them.
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.’
Art critic Waldemar Januszczak is on the quest to explain exactly what the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is actually trying to tell us.
Back To Africa
In the late 1950's, Jasper Johns emerged as force in the American art scene. His richly worked paintings of maps, flags, and targets led the artistic community away from Abstract Expressionism toward a new emphasis on the concrete
The movie focuses on the the graduation of the the previous General Manager Takahashi Minami and now Yokoyama Yui taking over. Furthermore, the sister groups HKT48 and NMB48 are gaining popularity. Also NGT48 make their debut and the rival group Nogizaka46 become a bigger and more threatening rival.
This is the legendary meeting between a young filmmaker and one of the masters of surrealism: the spanish painter Óscar Domínguez, born in La Laguna, Tenerife, in 1906, died in Paris in 1957. In the "Visite," the artist -admirer of Picasso, rebellious disciple of Breton- is presented in solitude, far from the tumult of the exhibitions and parisian circles. An austere approach, almost “povera”, with no audio, nor flashy camera movements, but rarely attractive. Why Resnais could not finish his movie? Hope one of our experts help us to solve the mystery.
A satire on the relationship between fame and integrity in the life of eccentric characters exploring the "art" of making noise using trash and everyday objects.