A Time for Making

Mary La Trobe-Bateman talks with Richard La Trobe-Bateman about the Gap Bridge & his design practice.

Vocation is a documentary on artists who knew from a very early age they wanted to be an artist. A decision that for them was instinctual and some may even say it is 'a calling' based on faith and perhaps even fate alone. Artists Andy Jones, Deepa Mehta, Marie Brassard, Christopher Pratt, Brad Peyton and Bif Naked are committed to creating work in theatre, literature, music, film and performance based on an innate desire to succeed while working in the precarious profession of art.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

Mann vor wilder Landschaft

Eric Leiser displays his boundless creativity in this short collection; A stunning compilation of works presented with a mixture of live action, stop motion animation, puppetry and pixilation techniques, produced between 2001 and 2006.

Gaëtan Chataigner has been filming his friend Philippe Katerine for nearly thirty years. The director revisits all these accumulated images in an attempt to understand how and why his artist friend became such a phenomenon. By following him step by step, sometimes questioning him, listening to his loved ones, he weaves a touching, funny, and moving portrait of this unique artist.

An unflinching and deeply personal journey into the life and work of guitarist Eric Clapton told through his own words and songs.

Artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The pair used found objects to construct a complex, interdependent contraption in an empty warehouse. When set in motion, a domino-like chain reaction ripples through the complex of imaginative devices. Fire, water, the laws of gravity, and chemistry determine the life-cycle of the objects. The process reveals a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, and improbability and precision, in an extended science project that will mesmerize the mind.

In operation to this day, the mansion known as Madame Satan began its activities in 1983, and in the 1980s was the main hub of avant-garde artists of the city, from which came out disparate and essential names for music, performing arts, visual arts, journalism, photo and video of Sao Paulo, as well as mythical characters of the night of São Paulo who made history with their absurd and impactful performances.

When 74-year-old Robert Tilley agreed to take photographer Ting Ting Chen on a road trip across Newfoundland, neither could have predicted the deep, cross-generational friendship that would blossom between them, nor how Robert's role in Ting Ting's art would challenge traditional ideas of the artist-muse relationship. This touching short film explores the concepts of aging, memory and identity while demonstrating the power of creative connection.

The documentary gives us a unique insight into the life of a pop star who broke through at ten years old. We follow her around the world and see a side she's never shown before. This is the story of an artist reaching for the very top, but with the knowledge that no matter how much she achieves, it'll never be enough to satisfy her.

The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.

The film is set in Tangier, a city in northern Morocco known for its rich cultural heritage and vibrant artistic scene. It features Iliass, a young interdisciplinary artist who skillfully merges four distinct art forms—blurring the lines between tradition and modernity—to create a singular, innovative expression. Through Iliass's journey, the film explores the dynamic interplay of identity, creativity, and the transformative power of art, set against the backdrop of Tangier’s unique blend of Mediterranean and Moroccan influences.

La Garoupe, a beach in Antibes, in 1937. For one summer, the painter and photographer Man Ray films his friends Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch, as well as Lee Miller. During these few weeks, love, friendship, poetry, photography and painting are still mixed in the carefree and the creativity specific to the artistic movements of the interwar period.

Len Lye (1901-1980) was a pioneer of experimental animation, and also of kinetic sculpture. This short film dramatically presents 18 minutes inside the head of the artist as a teenager. The opening scenes are set in New Zealand in the year 1917, on the day when Lye (setting out on his bicycle to deliver newspapers) makes his excited discovery that motion can be the basis for a radically new approach to art.

Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

Fred Deux and Cécile Reims are major twentieth century artists. Over a period of several months, Matthieu Chatellier filmed them in the privacy of their peinting and engraving work. The film focuses on a precise time in their lives: the time of ageing, dispossession and questions about the hereafter.

Belgrade in the 1990s seen through the eyes of Goran Čavajda 'Čavke', the late drummer of Serbian rock band "Electric Orgasm". Under dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević, his city became one of the worst places to live in Europe, while the country suffered highest inflation rate in its history, accompanied by mass poverty and political isolation. Documentary follows Čavke walking through the Belgrade streets where total chaos and decline of moral values rule. He finds his only shelter underground, where his friends - musicians and artists - live and work invisibly.

The documentary accompanies Irish-born artist Sean Scully as he works on his piece “Grey Wolf”.

A Brazilian performance artist Vanesa Cardoso living in Newfoundland, Canada explores the figures of her Pochinko clown, discovering a desire to expose the comedy of our deepest vulnerabilities - the very ones that make us human. A creative journey through Richard Pochinko's seven masks and six directions, Vanessa reveals her clown while musing on the personal drive and struggles that inspire her art.