Because We Must

Painter Zdzisław Beksiński, his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz, a well-known radio journalist and translator, were a typical and unconventional family, both at the same time. One of the father’s obsessions was filming himself and his family members. Using archival footage only, shot primarily by Zdzisław, as well many other materials, which have not been presented anywhere so far, the film tells a tragic story of the Beksińskis that has never ceased to fascinate Polish filmmakers.

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

Arda Wuyts experiments with editing and color.

Jim is a young man from Essex who moves to Soho with dreams of fame and fortune. When he joins a group of luxury male escorts, he finds himself embarking on a psychedelic journey of decadence.

The pride of Napoleon's victories, the Arc de Triomphe, whose first stone was laid in 1806 at the top of the Champs-Élysées, is, along with the Eiffel Tower, one of the most visited monuments in the French capital. Wanted by an emperor, inaugurated under the reign of a king (Louis-Philippe) and sanctuarized by the Republic, this patriotic temple polarizes the passions of a whole nation. A historical portrait before "packaging", which teems with anecdotes and unsuspected details.

This film tells Jean-Michel's story through exclusive interviews with his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before agreed to be interviewed for a TV documentary. With striking candour, Basquiat's art dealers - including Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger - as well as his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists, expose the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat confronted on a daily basis. As historical tableaux, visual diaries of defiance or surfaces covered with hidden meanings, Basquiat's art remains the beating heart of this story.

A look at the feud between graffiti artists King Robbo and Banksy.

This intimate documentary follows the journey of Bronwyn Oliver, a working-class girl from the country who became one of Australia's most influential contemporary sculptors.

To mark his fiftieth birthday in 1988, London's Tate Gallery staged a major retrospective of his work. Melvyn Bragg joined David Hockney for an exclusive private view of the exhibition and they were filmed discussing pictures from all stages of Hockney's remarkable career.

In the occupied Netherlands near the end of WWII, a young teenager, Jeroen Boman (Maarten Smit) is sent to the Dutch countryside to avoid the war in Amsterdam. While living with his adopted family, Jeroen meets and becomes friends with a Canadian soldier named Walt Cook, who is stationed at the same town he is staying at. Joroen and Walt spend a lot of time playing around and eventually a romantic relationship develops between them. The boy’s sexual curiosity leads him to have a sexual experience with Walt, an encounter that is shown with some vague detail but without actually showing any nudity, even though sexual intimacy between the two of them is implied. Overall, the movie handles this difficult subject with an elegant style and feeling, without having the adult-child relationship overwhelm the viewer and thus allowing the movie to be seen as just a wartime relationship between two people that marks an important time in a young boy’s life.

A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, combining dramatizations of three of his novels and a depiction of the events of November 25th, 1970.

Disappearing Man is an intimate film portrait of TriBeCa artist Robert Janz - whose ephemeral, streetscape water paintings reflect on the impermanence of the artist’s own life. Robert Janz’s unique artistic medium is water on brick, stone or concrete. He paints totemic words on New York City façades and sidewalks. Janz’s self-erasing word paintings challenge the serendipitous viewer to reflect on the contradictory nature of artistic practices that often capture and immortalize both a fleeting moment in time and the mortal artist that captured it. In capturing this story of the artist at work, the film evokes Janz’s philosophical musings on practicing an art form that is very much a metaphor for his own mortality. Both the filmmaker and the viewer clearly become not just observers but students of Janz and his art.

Documentary celebrating the LGBTQ contribution to the arts in Britain in the 50 years since decriminalisation. It features interviews with leading figures from right across the arts in Britain, including Stephen Fry, David Hockney, Sir Antony Sher, Alan Cumming, Sandi Toksvig, Jeanette Winterson, Will Young and Alan Hollinghurst, and it explores the distinctive perspectives and voices that LGBT artists have brought to British cultural life.

While restoring a fifteenth-century painting Julia reveals a hidden Latin phrase. A series of murders begin to rock her small world of art experts, patrons and restorers, and she finds that the mystery of the painting is interwoven with the mystery of the deaths around her.

A brother and sister dance act encounter challenges and romance when booked in London during the Royal Wedding.

Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.

In decades past, Native American artists who wanted to sell to mainstream collectors had little choice but to create predictable, Hollywood-style western scenes. Then came a generation of painters and sculptors led by Allan Houser (or Haozous), a Chiricahua Apache artist with no interest in stereotyped imagery and a belief that his own rich heritage was compatible with modernist ideas and techniques. Narrated by actor Val Kilmer and originally commissioned as part of an exhibit of Houser’s work at the Oklahoma History Center, this program depicts the artist’s tribal ancestry, his rise to regional and national acclaim, and the continuing success of his sons as they expand upon and depart from their father’s achievements. Key works are documented, as is Houser’s tenure at the Santa Fe–based Institute of American Indian Arts.

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT EDWARD HOPPER is an immersive experience in 3D, that takes its viewers on a journey into the world of Hopper, sharpening their senses for some aspects of his unique work.

About the artist Ian Hellström (1925-2012) with his own museum. A tour of Ian's house is an adventure in art, antiques, skulls and dolls, all in perfect balance. Ian created various jewelry sculptures, a kind of collage with glass beads, brooches, simple jewelry and various toys, which were sometimes pasted into boxes with small compartments. His colorful art and cross-border life is captivating but not always easy to understand.

The second anime short based on Kyoto Animation studio mascot character Baja.