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

Sunflowers

Working closely with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Sunflowers goes beyond a ‘virtual exhibition’, delving into the rich and complex stories behind each of the paintings to unveil the mysteries of the sunflowers. What did the flowers mean to Van Gogh, and why do they resonate so much with audiences today? With a striking portrayal of the artist by actor Jamie de Courcey and fascinating insights from art historians, botanists and everything in between, the film offers a unique insight into Van Gogh’s life and artwork.

This Is Not a Dream

The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism, This Is Not a Dream traces the influences of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Jack Smith to the perverted frontiers of YouTube and Chatroulette, taking in subverted talk shows and soap operas, streetwalker fashions and glittery magic penises along the way.

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.

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.

Pyhä

Frida

An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time — drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.

Històries de Bruguera

The history of Bruguera, the most important comic publisher in Spain between the 1940s and the 1980s. How the characters created by great writers and pencilers became Spanish archetypes and how their strips persist nowadays as a portrait of Spain and its people. The daily life of the creators and the founding family, the Brugueras. The world in which hundreds of vivid colorful paper beings lived and still live, in the memory of millions, in the smile of everyone.

Being Kae Tempest

Poet, rapper, playwright and recording artist Kae Tempest is one of the most viscerally exciting artists working in Britain today. They are the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious Ted Hughes prize and have been nominated for both the Brit and Mercury music awards. Tempest has always found support and respect within the queer art scenes, a place close to their heart. In July 2020, they came out as non-binary, announcing that they would publish and perform under the name Kae. This film delves deep into their creative process and gains rare, intimate insights into Kae’s life throughout a period of profound personal and artistic change.

Les chiens-loups

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.

Cindy Sherman: Nobody's Here But Me

New York based artist, Cindy Sherman, is famous for her photographs of women in which she is not only the photographer, but also the subject. She has contributed her own footage to the programme by recording her studio and herself at work with her Hi-8 video camera. It reveals a range of unexpected sources from visceral horror to medical catalogues and exploitation movies, and explores her real interests and enthusiasms. She shows an intuitive and often humorous approach to her work, and reflects on the themes of her work since the late 1970s. She talks about her pivotal series known as the `Sex Pictures' in which she addresses the theme of sexuality in the light of AIDS and the arts censorship debate in the United States.

The Original Richard McMahan

The multi-talented outsider artist Richard McMahan is on a quest to painstakingly re-create thousands of famous and not-so-famous paintings and artifacts–in miniature.

National Gallery

A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

Portrait of an Artist: Marcel Janco, Dada Artist

A documentary produced by the Israeli film service. "I believe that every artist needs to be reborn", declares Marcel Janco, one of the co-founders of the Dada movement. Janco, 82 during filming, tells in this film about his various periods as an artist: from the first sketches on a school notebook, to the foundation of the Dada in Zurich, ending with foundation of the artists' village Ein Hod in Israel

Botticelli, Florence and the Medici

Documentary on the art and culture of Florence in 15th century Tuscany and, in particular, the work of Eary Ranaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1501).

Semi Colin

Challenging all notions of genre, Semi Colin is a living, breathing art installation. Part performance, part art, part social comment, Colin philosophizes on his life's obsessive work as an erotic artist.

Once upon a time... "I, Daniel Blake"

The documentary, filmed in England in autumn 2020, sheds light on the genesis and background of the social drama.

Batman & Bill

Everyone thinks that Bob Kane created Batman, but that’s not the whole truth. One author makes it his crusade to make it known that Bill Finger, a struggling writer, actually helped invent the iconic superhero, from concept to costume to the very character we all know and love. Bruce Wayne may be Batman’s secret identity, but his creator was always a true mystery.

Strange Object

An archival investigation into the imperial image-making of the RAF ‘Z Unit’, which determined the destruction of human, animal and cultural life across Somaliland, as well as Africa and Asia.

Box

A group of friends try to defeat an evil king, and meet some quirky characters along the way.

Mask the Kekkou: Reborn

Sparta Academy is the nation's top prep school, where students with poor grades undergo frightening torture under the school headmaster's direction. Kekko Kamen makes her appearance at the school in outrageous attire, completely naked except for her red mask, boots and gloves, and attacks the torturing teacher.

Hello

I wouldn't answer if I were you' Hello is the story of a young lady who falls prey to an evil killer.. alone in her apartment, eagerly awaiting the return of her boyfriend, the phone rings...

Film

Before the three feature films, Mario Schifano directs the camera towards the people around him to create real film diaries. His friends, his time partner and the artists he frequented are portrayed in their everyday life or object of the mechanical gaze of the camera, a filter through which to look at the outside world.

Paradise and Back

Tonnemann lives in one of the wooden sheds at the far end of Islands Brygge, close to Copenhagen's landfill site. But in 1928, he wants to leave this environment behind – to go where the air is fresh and life may offer both security and meaning. He is already on his way with his packed suitcase to sign on to a long-distance boat when a lovely girl gets in his way with her little red sports car.

Box

The execution was scheduled and the last meal consumed. The coolness of the poisons entering the blood system slowed the heart rate and sent him on the way to Judgement. He had paid for his crime with years on Death Row waiting for this moment and now he would pay for them again as the judgment continued..

Hello

Hello explores changes in two people’s working lives: a Mexican trash picker who separates and collects recyclable materials from landfills to sell by the kilo, and a German freelance computer-animation designer working for the advertising industry in Berlin. The double interview is controlled and manipulated by a computer-generated severed hand which Maria describes as an object once discovered in the trash while working in the violent northern town of Mexicali. This CGI hand was in turn produced by Max, who was born with no arms, and sought refuge in computer-imaging as a means to operate and manipulate a digital reality.

Hope or The Devil's Prey

Six Hours: Surviving Typhoon Yolanda

In the middle of a broadcast about Typhoon Yolanda's initial impact, reporter Jiggy Manicad was faced with the reality that he no longer had communication with his station. They were, for all intents and purposes, stranded in Tacloban. With little option, and his crew started the six hour walk to Alto, where the closest broadcast antenna was to be found. Letting the world know what was happening to was a priority, but they were driven by the need to let their families and friends know they were all still alive. Along the way, they encountered residents and victims of the massive typhoon, and with each step it became increasingly clear just how devastating this storm was. This was a storm that was going to change lives.

Film

"This piece, with the generic title Film, is a series of short videos built around one protocol: a snippet of news from a newspaper of the day, is rolled up and then placed on a black-inked surface. On making contact with the liquid, the roll opens and of Its own accord frees itself of the gesture that fashioned it. As it comes alive in this way, the sliver of paper reveals Its hitherto unexposed content; this unpredictable kinematics is evidence of the constant impermanence of news. As well as exploring a certain archaeology of cinema, the mechanism references the passage of time: the ink, whether it is poured or printed, is the ink of ongoing human history." –Ismaïl Bahri

Jean Painlevé Through His Films

This documentary about the life and work of filmmaker Jean Painlevé was originally presented in eight parts on French television. It was edited to remove duplicated material from its original length of 240 minutes.

Sabían demasiado

A gang of Spanish pickpockets decide to send one of them to Chicago to learn how to be a gangster...

12

After blowing his professional ballet career, John's only way to redeem himself is to concoct the demise of his former partner, Leah, who he blames for his downfall; he rehearses his salvation in his mind in the way that he rehearses a dance, but being able to break from the routine will be the key to his success.

Chances

Two brothers, Jack and Tom, are in love with the same woman, Molly. While the two brothers go off to war and Molly does her part in the effort, Tom believes that Rose is waiting for him, while in fact, she loves Jack and only turned to Tom on the rebound. Jack and Molly meet while he is on leave, and when he returns to battle, he doesn't know how to handle the situation with his brother.

King Lily of the Valley

Spring is in the air and Puck and Einar, as well as Christer Wijk are invited to a wedding in Skoga. The day before the wedding, the bride-to-be enters a flower-shop in order to inspect her bridal bouquet of lily of the valley, but suddenly vanishes without at trace. When she eventually turns up again, it is Christer who finds her. She lies dead outside her home with a bouquet of lily of the valley in her hand. Everybody close to the bride are suspects, not least her best friend, whom Christer has just begun flirting with. Everybody seems to have something to hide. Question is: are their secrets connected to the murder?

Crackula Goes to Hollywood

A mysterious man from Alaska, known to be from the dark side, becomes addicted to sucking crack blood. He single handedly ends up cleaning the streets of Hollywood of all crack users and drug dealers.

Sickies Making Films

A love letter to film history, Sickies Making Films looks at our urge to censor movies and asks, Why? By focusing on the Maryland Board of Censors, the nation's longest lasting censor board, we discover reasons both absurd and surprisingly understandable.