Art From Art

Experimental research and dissemination documentary about current contemporary art that compiles the opinions, experiences and anecdotes of artists, gallery owners, curators, museum directors and experts.

The Mona Lisa Myth

Philippe-Alain Michaud, le réel traversé par la fiction

To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.

Bomb It

Through interviews and guerilla footage of graffiti writers in action on five continents, the documentary tells the story of graffiti from its origins in prehistoric cave paintings thru its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70’s and 80’s, then follows the flames as they paint the globe.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.

Art City 1 Making It in Manhattan

Unlike any art movie you've ever seen, Making it in Manhattan is informed 'entertainment' about the people who make contemporary art. Artists, collectors, and dealers bring to life the art capital of the world, New York, as it plunges into the 21st Century. Presenting a cross-section of artists, the film discusses inspiration, aesthetics, and the meaning of success. With Louise Bourgeois, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Neil Jenney, Elizabeth Murray, Ashley Bickerton, Gary Simmons, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Rirkrit Tiravanija, St. Clair Cemin, Ivan Karp, Jay Gorney, Matthew Marks, Jerry Saltz, Herb & Dorothy Vogel, and others. From abstraction to figuration, from installation to conceptual art, from the privacy of the doctor's office to the posh gallery opening, Making it in Manhattan captures the reality of a special world. Music by Tom Waits, Don Braden Ryuichi Sakamoto, George van Eps, Piero Umiliani with Chet Baker.

Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World

This ninety-minute film takes audiences on an epic journey across nine countries and over 1,400 years of history. It explores themes such as the Word, Space, Ornament, Color and Water and presents the stories behind many great masterworks of Islamic Art and Architecture. Narrated by Academy Award winning performer Susan Sarandon, this dazzling documentary reveals the variety and diversity of Islamic art. It provides a window into Islamic culture and brings broad insights to the enduring themes that have propelled human history and fueled the rise of world civilization over the centuries

Faces Places

Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

Kandinsky

Colour, form, area - this is the formula of the greatest pioneer of abstract painting. Kandinsky came to art late in life, but his impact through Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Bauhaus paved the way for modern art. In 1913, he created one of the first abstract pictures, the theoretical basis of which was inspired by his essay Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art). Accompanied by Mussorgsky's Pictures From An Exhibition Labarthe goes on a sensual journey which makes the soul resound with colours and forms. "A picture has to resound and must be bathed in an inner glow." Kandinsky

Laerte-se

In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.

Pyhä

The Story Won't Die

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.

David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts

Widely considered Britain’s most popular artist, David Hockney is a global sensation with exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and beyond, attracting millions of visitors worldwide. Now entering his 9th decade, Hockney shows absolutely no evidence of slowing down or losing his trademark boldness. Featuring intimate and in-depth interviews with Hockney, this revealing film focuses on two blockbuster exhibitions held in 2012 and 2016 at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Director Phil Grabsky secured privileged access to craft this cinematic celebration of a 21st century master of creativity.

Town Destroyer

Controversy erupts over a New-Deal-era mural of the namesake of San Francisco’s George Washington High School. The thirteen-panel artwork "The Life of Washington" by Victor Arnautoff offers a view of the Founding Father both celebratory and critical, referencing his involvements in slavery and Native American genocide.

Liu Xiaodong: Hometown Boy

One of the best-known Chinese figurative painters, Liu Xiaodong goes back to his hometown of Jincheng, in the province of Liaoning (North-East China), to re-paint again friends and relatives after several years have gone by. With a soundtrack by famed composer Lim Giong (Millennium Mambo, The Assassin).

Ashes and Snow

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.

Pictura

Pictura is a documentary film directed by seven famous directors, and narrated by several famous Hollywood actors. The film attempts to give the general filmgoing public a taste of art history and art appreciation.

I Will Dance

Follows the young people of Selma, Alabama's RATCo (Random Acts of Theatre Company) as they journey to New York City to share their story of hope, resilience, and overcoming.

The Diamond King

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.

Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star

In this documentary on the life of Joan Crawford, we learn why she should be remembered as the great actress she was, and not only as "mommie dearest." caricature she has become. Friends, fellow actors, directors, and others reminisce about their association with her, and numerous film clips show off her talent from her start in silents to bad science fiction/horror movies at the end of her career.

Best Ever Bond

Roger Moore presents the ten best sequences ever to have appeared in the James Bond series, and cast members recall their favourite moments.

Lethal Injection: The Story Of Vaccination

Lethal Injection is a very well-researched film with definitive proof that vaccines are being stealthily used to force sterilize the masses, as part of the New World Order’s “fertility management.” Vaccines don’t work! Countless statistics show that time and time again vaccinated people contract the very disease they were supposedly inoculated against – sometimes from the very vaccine itself. With side effects including autism, paralysis, cancer and death, some vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue. As former director of the National Institute of Health director James Shannon said, “The only safe vaccine is a vaccine that’s never used.

GEO Reportage - Thaïlande, un terrain de football insolite

Giovanni Improtta

Giovanni Improtta is a criminal who wants to climb the social ladder and become a law-abiding citizen. To achieve it, he commits some more crimes He is betrayed, and ends up under the spotlight of the media and the radar of the police, falsely charged for murder.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Lost Without You

Oliver's Divine Delivery Theory is put to the test when he and the POstables seem to be unable to deliver a damaged letter from a military veteran that's a matter of life and death.

Boxing Fever

Fairground boxing booth where visitors try to knock out the champion and win five pounds, the first contestants is knocked out but the very eager (and possibly drunk) third man knocks out the champion and overcome with "boxing fever" rushes out punching at everybody and everything he meets. (britishpathe.com)

The Making of Dandelion Man and Potter Pauls

BEE! The Band reflects on recording their two newest singles.

Sable Cicada

Diaochan (aka Diau Charn and Sable Cicada), one of the Four Beauties of China, is supposed to be so stunningly lovely that the moon was shamed to hide behind clouds. Despite being the only Beauty among the four who is not a real historical figure but one conjured by storytelling imagination and embellished by public fascination, her story was nonetheless incorporated by author Luo Guangzhong into his popular and influential novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Her tale is one of Machiavellian intrigue, in which she schemes with her godfather Wang Yun to restore moral order to the land, sowing discord between the corrupt Minister Dong Zhuo and his adopted son Lu Bu, a man of martial and military prowess.

Miocardio

Panoramic View of the Golden Gate

This picture was taken from the front end of a train during a trip from the famous Cliff House to Bakers Beach along the shore of the Golden Gate. The train runs along the brink of the cliff and gives a perfect representation of the objects that meet the eye prior to entering the Golden Gate. One of the features of this picture is the stirring ride along the very edge of the cliff, the track being laid in places within a foot of the brink, and far below can be seen the huge breakers dashing against the foot of the cliff. (Edison Catalog)

Nights of Terror

The young Evelyne lives with a man, her fiancee Frank, with whom she has a child. But her fiancee is a rundown drunk constantly hanging over the bottle. Evelyne wants to leave Frank.

Deux

After reading a postcard that her mother let go in the wind, a woman learns that she has a twin.

A Boulevard Romance

The film was shot on the story of Valentin Pikul “Go and do not sin”, which tells about the real events that took place in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The story of the young beauty Olga Palem from a poor large family is replete with tragic events. Olga's passionate disinterested love for student Alexander Zapolsky becomes her evil rock. Spoiled and selfish, Alexander is not able to appreciate her feelings. Exhausted by humiliation, a young woman kills her lover. The high-profile trial of Olga Pale becomes a sensation that stirred up the whole of Russia ...

Los Hermanos na Fundição Progresso

With 31 tracks, Los Hermanos na Fundição Progresso brings together the greatest hits of the band. The DVD was directed by Nilson Primitivo and contains the entire show on June 9, 2007 (26 songs) and, as extras, five songs recorded on June 8, 2007.

Anything Goes

On an ocean liner, a nightclub singer tries to help a fellow American romance an English heiress who is being forced to return home to marry a man she doesn't love. The American must avoid his boss who is traveling on the same vessel and disguises himself as a gangster traveling with a minister who is, in fact, a disguised gangster on the lam.

Terrible Angels

Detective Ben Nolan is sent to investigate the story of a convicted prostitute and known drug dealer Linda Grossel. Linda explains that she was kidnapped and held captive for weeks. As the investigation unfolds, Linda's sanity is put to question, leaving Ben to decide whether to go on with the investigation or leave Linda to the fate of the prison system.

Razor's Ring

In the wake of last week’s Backwoods Bloodbath (review here) release, MVM offer up another similarly abysmal slice of no-budget drudgery in the form of Razor’s Ring. Here the story follows protagonist Scott (Casey), a businessman out for his morning run when he comes across ruthless ex-con couple Razor and Julie (Schilens and Wharton). After witnessing them callously run over a dog on the road, Scott has a gun pulled in his face and is forced to join them on their Death Race 20000-inspired joy ride as the pair attempt to gain a better “score” than their partner.