From Le Petit Rapporteur to Sous vos applaudissements, from La Lorgnette to L'Ecole des fans, everyone remembers the mythical programs of Jacques Martin, the Sunday afternoon emperor. Through rare archives and the testimonies of his close friends and collaborators, this documentary reveals the hidden sides of this sacred television monster who would have liked to be an artist.
The San Francisco Foundation 2013 Community Leadership Awards presents Nancy Hom with the Helen Crocker Russell Award, made to an under-recognized, mature artist who has made a significant and ongoing contribution in the Bay Area. Nancy Hom, has used the arts as a means to reclaim and affirm the histories, struggles, and contributions of multicultural and underserved communities. Through her silkscreen posters, illustrations, 3-D installations, and curatorial work, Nancy has addressed a range of social issues and causes. In addition to being an artist, curator, and writer who continues to push the boundaries of her art after forty years, she has also nurtured the artistic and organizational growth of over a dozen Bay Area arts organizations. Her projects have had a profound influence, from healing historical trauma to mentoring the next generation of artists to build community through art. www.sff.org/cla
Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.
A short documentary on how people view art and its value in today's society.
In this unique, compelling film, those who knew him speak freely, some for the first time, to reveal the many mysteries of Francis Bacon.
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.
Narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi - star of the landmark television series "I, Claudius" - this documentary explores art and culture around the Bay of Naples before Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. The bay was then the most fashionable destination for vacationing Romans. Julius Caesar, emperors, and senators were among those who owned sumptuous villas along its shores. Artists flocked to the region to create frescoes, sculpture, and luxurious objects in gold, silver, and glass for villa owners as well as residents of Pompeii and other towns in the shadow of Vesuvius. The film concludes with the story of the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum from the 18th century onward.
Joe Brainard (1941-1994) was an artist particularly noted for his work in collage and comics. Brainard’s artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma where, along with Ron Padgett and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Brainard and Padgett serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Brainard was a prolific artist whose work was showcased in varied spaces such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. He also frequently collaborated with members of the New York School of Poets, supplying book and cover art and bringing to life visual representations of poetry. Brainard’s writing also received acclaim, particularly his 1975 memoir I Remember.
Norval Morrisseau was the first Indigenous Canadian artist to be taken seriously in the art world. By the turn of this century his work commanded tens of thousands of dollars. So when Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn learned his prized painting was a forgery, he sued. But as Jamie Kastner's doc reveals, there was a cottage industry in fake Morrisseaus, an industry that flourished unchecked for years, feeding on greed, exploitation, racism and contempt.
With a pair of scissors and some paper, he turned his art into a weapon the Nazis feared. A look back at the eventful career of satirist John Heartfield (1891-1968), pioneer of photomontage and modern graphic design.
Tom Volf invites you to delve into the fascinating world of Véronique Sanson, a living legend of French chanson. After several years of research and immersion, he is unveiling an intimate and sincere portrait of the artist in a film event. The fruit of his encounter with the singer, this project highlights the raw emotion and beauty of her career.
With the construction of the Indian planned city of Chandigarh, the Swiss and French architect Le Corbusier completed his life's work 70 years ago. Chandigarh is a controversial synthesis of the arts, a bold utopia of modernity. The film accompanies four cultural workers who live in the planned city and reflects on Le Corbusier's legacy, utopian urban ideas and the cultural differences between East and West in an atmospherically dense narrative.
Artist and author Tove Jansson talks about her thoughts and life at home on Tähtitorninmäki in Helsinki and in her cottage in the outer archipelago.
A documentary that traces the creation of the Philadelphia sculpture, Schuylkill Currents from the granite quarry through the refined finished public sculpture.
Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.
This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.
Exhibition on Screen's latest release celebrates the life and masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch brought together from around the world to his hometown in the Netherlands as a one-off exhibition. With exclusive access to the gallery and the show, this stunning film explores this mysterious, curious, medieval painter who continues to inspire today's creative geniuses. Over 420,000 people flocked to the exhibition to marvel at Bosch's bizarre creations but now, audiences can enjoy a front row seat at Bosch's extraordinary homecoming from the comfort of their own home anywhere in the world. Expert insights from curators and leading cultural critics explore the inspiration behind Bosch's strange and unsettling works. Close-up views of the curiosities allow viewers to appreciate the detail of his paintings like never before. Bosch's legendary altarpieces, which have long been divided among museums, were brought back together for the exhibition and feature in the film.
Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.
H*ART ON dives off the deep end of modern art. A film about the yearning to create, to mould everyday emotions into a meaningful life and, most of all, to live beyond one's death. A struggle that gets to the existential core of each of us. How do you find meaning in everyday fear, love, sex and loneliness?
At work on his Elegies and Windows series, Motherwell examines his place in the Abstract Expressionist movement, which he calls the first original American movement in the "mainstream," and its practitioners "the last romantics." He distinguishes between his large paintings and his intimate papier collée. Motherwell recollects the state of American art in the 1940s and the impact of European emigré painters on the younger generation of emerging artists. He discusses the significance of collage, or papier collée, as an artist's medium and explains how he first became involved with this process. Motherwell offers his interpretations of earlier directions in art and his response to the object oriented painting that emerged in America in the 1960s. A unique document of one of the founding members of the New York School. He died in 1991.