Cocottes et courtisanes dans l’œil des peintres

Raffael – Ein sterblicher Gott

The Renaissance master Botticelli spent over a decade painting and drawing hell as the poet Dante described it. The film takes us on a journey through hell with fascinating and exciting insights into Botticelli's art and its hidden story.

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

Chasing Fireflies focuses on the narratives of young female children who were victimized by human trafficking and their eventual captivity to child prostitution.

Buy Bye Beauty is a 2001 documentary film by Swedish director and performance artist Pål Hollender. The film is about the way Latvian sex industry and its being fueled by businessmen and sex tourists from Sweden visiting Riga. The film was shot in Riga in July 2000. The narration of the film is in English, with interviews conducted in Russian and Latvian.

A KISS FOR GABRIELA tells the story of a remarkable woman named Gabriela Leite. An activist for sex workers’ rights for over 30 years, Gabriela was the first sex worker to run for Brazilian Congress. The documentary presents an intimate portrait of her 2010 campaign when she faced 822 opponents and challenged a male dominated political system. Combining an observational style with unrestricted access, it explores what it means to be a prostitute, to be a wife, and most importantly, what it means for a woman representing one of the most stigmatized populations in the world to run for office. Gabriela’s charisma and amazing history of activism engages audiences and encourages them to reflect critically on laws and policies that restrict the rights and possibilities of women like Gabriela globally. For women like Gabriela who make history and challenge stereotypes with their campaigns, it is not whether they win or lose, or even how they play. It’s that they’re in the game at all.

During the last half-century, Cambodia has witnessed genocide, decades of war and the collapse of social order. Now, documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh looks at an irreparable tragedy that is less visible, yet no less pervasive: the spiritual death that results when young women are forced into prostitution. Angry and impassioned, PAPER CANNOT WRAP UP EMBERS presents the searing stories of poor Asian women whose lives were violated and their destinies destroyed when their bodies were turned into items of sexual commerce.

Angkor et Les Mystères de L'Empire Khmer

James Wong and his female assistant visited various kinds of pleasure-houses, including invisible dens, high-tech private dens, smuggling blackpoints and famouse tryst places, both large and small ones, throughout Hong Kong. They also looked back to the Scientific Beauty in Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, striptease in the Kowloon Walled City and the old stories in fish-ball stalls. There are also interviews of call-girls and grooms.

A documentary about the statue Winged Victory of Samothrace, unquestionably one of the most complete expressions of Hellenistic sculpture

A documentary about the "The Mystic Lamb" painted at the beginning of the 15th century by the Van Eyck brothers.

There is an interlinking history of violent European colonialism and the cultural legacy of ethnographic collections in institutions. This documentary traces the progression of colonial history from the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 to the systematic elimination of cultural traditions, religions and lifeways which would occur sporadically through genocides and warfare until the early 20th century throughout the African continent—surveying the inquiries and movements for historical justice, the relationships between European institutions and colonial violence and following enduring struggles against these organisations to regain what was taken.

A portrait of Spanish visual artist, writer and art critic Elena Asins (1940-2015), a key figure in geometric abstraction since the sixties.

21st century legal prostitution through the frank stories of Amsterdam red-light district sex workers at a time when tighter regulation threatens their livelihood.

French writer Jean-Claude Carrière traces the life and work of Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

Both a visit to a very peculiar exhibition at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, as well as an unprejudiced look at the artistic depiction of violence throughout history and the ways in which that depiction has been gendered.

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.

Every fall, The Center for Cartoon Studies invites 20 aspiring cartoonists to White River Junction, Vermont for a no-holds-barred education in comics. Those who complete the two-year program earn a Master of Fine Arts degree and are ready to face the hardship of a career in one of the world's most drudgery-inducing art forms. This is their story.

An intriguing exploration of the Asian massage parlor industry in Providence, RI, where a 25 year-old loophole has made the exchange of sex for money legal - as long as it happens behind closed doors. As the documentary follows a recent Korean immigrant, "Heather", working to operate her spa, the city's mayor fights to change the law that allows her business a legal existence. The film includes interviews with Korean women who work in spas, clients who frequent the spas, politicians from 1980 and today, police, local news footage, radio call-in shows and "voiced" reviews from inter-net escort review boards.

The Naked Dance is the first documentary about America's legendary legal red-light district that thrived in New Orleans from 1898 until World War I. Storyville got its name when Alderman Sidney Story attempted to clear up the New Orleans waterfront by restricting prostitution to a specific neighborhood. To his chagrin, the area was dubbed "Storyville," and it was so known until the U.S. Navy closed it for good in 1917.