Quando i tedeschi non sapevano nuotare
Dick Perez, official Baseball Hall of Fame artist for over 20 years, painted the game's history and every inductee - a project he continues in his 80s. This childhood immigrant's portraits changed commemoration of America's iconic pastime.
A visual journey into the life and legacy of one of Australia's most celebrated artists, Brett Whiteley.
Transumanza
On 9 July 2021, the 422 workers at the GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio near Florence received their dismissal, by email. They immediately met in front of the factory, scared away the management's bodyguards and have been holding an open-ended meeting at the factory ever since. In June of 2022, they talk about how they are rooted in the territory, why 30,000 people demonstrated with them. They explain why they put their struggle under the slogan "Insorgiamo!" ("Let's rise up!"), the slogan of the italian partisans who liberated Florence in 1944. But they also talk about their collaboration with climate activists and what they would like to produce. But as things stand today, it is not the workers who are responsible for the ecological damage caused by production: "Nobody asked me what I would like to produce when they hired me. They hired me and that was it."
Milenec léta
During the women's demonstration on March 8, 1972, Mariasilvia SPOLATO was there with a placard: Liberazione omosessuale. A month later, Simone de Beauvoir came to Rome to give an interview, and this placard illustrated her article. Mariasilvia could no longer teach, ended up homeless and spent her life on the trains.
This film explains what James Ensor (1860-1949) meant for the development of art and makes palpable where he got his inspiration from.
Alma W. Thomas lived a life of firsts: the first Fine Arts graduate of Howard University (1924), the first Black woman to mount a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1972), and the first Black woman to have her paintings exhibited in the White House (2009). Yet she did not receive national attention until she was 80.
The Cinema According to Dalí
THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.
Documentary film about the painter and sculptor Jörg Immendorff who ranks among the most important German artists. The filmmakers accompanied Immendorff over a period of two years – until his death in May 2007. The artist had been living for nine years knowing that he was terminally ill with ALS. The film shows how Immendorff continued to work with unabated energy and how he tried not to let himself be restrained by his deteriorating health.
Libere
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.
Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.
Born on March 25, 1840, Gustave Guillaumet discovered Algeria by chance when he was about to embark for Italy. Over the course of his ten or eleven trips and extended stays, he established a familiarity with this space. Traveling through the different regions from north to south, he never ceases to note the differences. He is also the first artist, apart from Delacroix's Women of Algiers, to penetrate into female interiors and reveal the reality, far removed from the harem fantasies that reigned in his time. Fascinated by the country, its deserts and its inhabitants , going so far as to live like the Algerians, Gustave Guillaumet devoted his life and his painting to this country, breaking with the colorful and exotic representations of the time. The painting The Famine in Algeria, restored thanks to exceptional fundraising, was dictated by the events of the years 1865-1868, and well illustrates his knowledge of the country, in a manner that is at once demanding, sensitive and serious.
Im Land des Schamanen
Janina Ramirez explores the BBC archives to create a TV history of Leonardo Da Vinci, discovering what lies beneath the Mona Lisa and even how he acquired his anatomical knowledge.
Wie ein Fluss. The Ska faces
Raphael: The Lord of the Arts is a documentary about the 15th century Italian Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio.