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- A fast moving odyssey into the subterranean world of the rarely explored province of Filipino genre filmmaking.
- A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Sphere Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat genius.
- Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.
- Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, roots himself in cultural visions of space, landscape, and juxtaposition. Inspired deeply by his home and heritage, Ando proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. Believing in the importance of carpentry and craftsmanship, Ando pays tribute to his culture and the way in which architecture is approached through the body. Showcasing his individuality through urban complexes, residences and chapels, Ando presents the work of his formative years, before embarking on projects in Europe and the United States.
- Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. The dancer is used as a medium to his or her inner life, but not for the portrayal of day to day existence. A Dionysian dance of nudity, eroticism, and sexuality, Butoh's scale of expression ranges from meditative tenderness to excessive grotesqueness. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society. An alliance of tradition and rebellion, Butoh is one of the most fascinating underground dance movements. "Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies.
- A look at the life, work, and impact of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), pop icon and artist, from his childhood in Pittsburgh to his death after a botched surgery. Warhol coined the word "superstar," became one, and changed the way the culture looks at and understands celebrity. After studying at Carnegie Tech, he goes to New York to be a commercial artist. By 1960, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist are inventing pop art. Warhol starts "The Factory," his workshop where he paints and makes movies. His is a cafe society of late nights and parties. His family, friends, an agent, a curator, gallery owners, actors, the co-founder of "Interview," and others tell stories and assess his art.
- A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.
- Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.
- Led by Meyer Schapiro and George Segal, "The Artist's Studio" gifts us with an intimate conversation between the art historian and the artist as they discuss Segal's plaster sculptures in relation to the European tradition and to contemporaries, from Giotto to Abstract Expressionism. Focusing on process, material, color and theory Schapiro and Segal examine the artist's work and the complex thought behind his acclaimed human casts.
- In "Gerhard Richter: 4 Decades" Curator Robert Storr takes us through the artist's 2002 MoMA retrospective room by room, accompanied by the artist himself. The haunting and diverse collection features 188 of Richter's signature blurred photo-realistic paintings. From the political struggles of Western Germany to portraits of loved ones, Richter's body of work evokes a sense of both familiarity and dread. Storr and Richter's discussion of the artist's motivation and vision results in a deeply honest reflection on the retrospective as well as Richter's career as "Europe's greatest modern painter".
- Meticulously setting up each cinematic shot, Gregory Crewdson has mastered a style of eerie realism intended the make the regular feel foreign. Similar to David Lynch's specific use of the uncanny in films such as "Blue Velvet", Crewdson's work paints a dark, deep portrait of American suburbia. Much like a film director, Crewdson achieves his startling images by working with a professional crew including a director of photography, a camera operator, a production designer, actors and a casting director. His astonishingly elaborate sets create a unique realm of mise-en-scène, inspired largely by the works of American artists and film directors. Gregory Crewdson: The Aesthetics of Repression observes and questions the photographer during his work on ten new images.
- With the participation of famed architects such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman: Making Architecture Move provides an intimate look into the work of the daring and controversial creator. Filmed in the U.S. and Germany, Eisenman takes the viewer through several of his buildings, including the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, while explaining his upcoming projects such as the Rebstockpark community in Frankfurt and the Max Reinhardt monument in Berlin. His predecessors and contemporaries offer praise and commentary on Eisenman's complex body of work including their own thoughts and theories surrounding his unique style.
- Guided by seasoned New Yorkers, political figures, and cultural connoisseurs, "Empire City" examines Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs in order to paint a portrait of the ever-evolving metropolis. Appearing to be both adaptable and stubbornly stagnant, New York is a city of juxtapositions. As our narrator notes, "The city is too big, too diverse, and too complex for anyone to comprehend. New York is many cities interlaced with one another, each in constant independent motion." In "Empire City" we see proof of this dynamic through both footage and discussion of extreme wealth, economic success and increasingly expensive real estate versus the hardships faced by the city's minorities such as people of color, immigrants, and the lower class. Leaders and residents such as David Rockefeller, Edward Koch, Norman Mailer, Jane Jacobs, and Herman Badillo offer their insight into the best and worst of New York while tenderly noting the pride and loyalty it's inhabitants hold onto.
- Larry Rivers addresses his art with a sense of primal urgency. He allows himself to find inspiration in whatever he is drawn to, driven by his non conforming notions surrounding focus and subject. Like the other pop artists of his time, Rivers found it vital to hone into one space or object and study it until it gained new meaning. Whether it be a body part or a piece of furniture, Rivers explores details so vividly that the subject itself becomes a separate entity, free entirely from the way it is viewed in day to day life. Rivers emphasizes his desire to "destroy the sort of reality of subject matter" (Larry Rivers), using his piece Double Portrait of Berdie to illustrate this concept. By showing the "subject" twice, Rivers is able to make his viewers question the true subject of the painting, and if there is one at all. Rivers seems to enjoy destroying narrative and playing with the mind's reaction to art. Through his art films such as "Tits", Rivers explores the boundaries between artist and audience as well as society's reaction to his intimate and unfamiliar exposure of the human body. Rivers applied his same method of isolating a subject to the naked body, stating that he is interested in "separating one detail from an environment and going at it relentlessly" (Larry Rivers). It is with this intensity that Rivers produces his work, whether his medium be canvas, sculpture or screen.
- Linked by their desire for the unknown and an increasingly explorative use of materials, the artists featured in 14 Americans: Directions of the 1970s strive to push boundaries and observe the space we occupy. Some of their activities enlist engineering and construction techniques, others compose texts or scripts that are central to their art. Some cast the viewer in the role of a spectator, while the others demand active participation. Through performances, sculptures, earthworks, furniture, and shaped canvases, artists such as Mary Miss and Scott Burton expand the meaning of art and strive to reshape our approach to creation.
- Flooded with astute analysis and discussion surrounding his motifs, movements, and methods, "Picasso: The Legacy of a Genius" walks us through the artist's timeline and the complex stages of his life's work. Guided by the prolific artists who followed Picasso such as, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and George Segal, we journey through the artist's spectacularly diverse collection of work from his melancholy Blue Period to the introduction of Cubism. When confronting Picasso's natural tendency to explore and excel at vastly different painting styles, Anthony Caro stated, "I don't know anybody that could change their whole artistic persona so variously and so quickly as Picasso." (Anthony Caro). Always deeply inspired by the poverty and hardships he faced in the early years of both his childhood and career, Picasso did not shy away from the ugliness of his experiences. Following the rapid success of Demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso threw himself into Cubism, creating many of the images that would inspire artists involved with the Abstract Expressionist movement in the years to come. His abstract figures and and settings illustrate the complexities of humanity, presenting inner emotion through his subject's contorted and curious forms.
- Filmed during a visit to the Spoleto Festival in Umbria on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, "Spoleto 1967" documents the vibrant celebration of culture. Featuring such productions as, "Don Giovanni" and "El Principe Constante", as well as poetry readings by Allen Ginsberg and Rafael Alberti, the Spoleto Festival continues to display an inviting variety of performances. From orchestra to ballet, the festival highlights the importance of the arts and its unwavering ability to bring people together.
- American composers have long struggled against the momentum of the Western European classical tradition and the prestige it has held in America's cultural life. Featuring Harry Partch, Lou Harrison and Terry Riley, Musical Outsiders: An American Legacy addresses the freedom desired by the musicians and their efforts to gain recognition and opportunities while existing outside of the mainstream. When asked about his creative process, Terry Riley offered the following thought, "There's always an endless frontier in music, because we're dealing here with a person's soul, you're dealing with something that's very basic, it's a spiritual element." (Terry Riley). Together the featured artists offer a deeper understanding of their alternative musical pursuits and how they have affected American culture.
- Jeff Wall is one of the most important and influential photographers working today. His work played a key role in establishing photography as a contemporary art form. Jeff Wall describes his recent work as "near documentary," a plausible account or a report on real or imagined encounters. Wall usually spends weeks painstakingly recreating these encounters and taking many pictures, from which he selects his final image in a critical process. His photographs are mainly displayed as backlit Cibachrome transparencies. In an interview with Sheena Wagstaff, Chief Curator at the Tate Modern, he said: Evaluation of quality is the core of the pleasure of the experience of art; the simultaneous pleasure of enjoying something intensely and of recognizing that it is a good work. I always judge my picture - daily, hourly, all the time. Even though it's disappointing to have to say "that one is not good", or "not as good as that one", it is still a pleasure to go through that process and experience a work afresh. Nothing has been as destructive to the condition of art as the idea that qualitative judgment is unimportant, and that art is important for cultural reasons. Art can only be important if it is good, because if it is good, it pleases us in ways we don't anticipate and don't understand, and that pleasure means something to us even if we can't specify what, exactly.
- Architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden where he can keep the politics of architecture at a comfortable distance as he enjoys status and praise for his unique modernist buildings. In "The Practice of Architecture", critic Kenneth Frampton visits Zumthor at his studio where the two are surrounded by models, designs and plans for current and future projects throughout Europe and the United States. Frampton questions the renowned architecture on the motives and methods behind some of his most famous works, including his Zinc-Mine-Museum in Norway and the highly acclaimed Therme Vals, a stunning hotel and spa built over the thermal springs in Graubünden. While walking us through his career, Zumthor discusses his penchant for minimalism, the importance of landscape, light and material, and the architectural theory behind his stunningly precise style.
- This extraordinary haunting building, a zig-zag form reflecting an invisible matrix of addresses of Jewish Berliners who once lived in the area, is Daniel Libeskind's first commission. It took ten years to build, and it has become an integral part of the cityscape, attracting vast numbers of visitors and signaling a new era of Jewish-German history. Libeskind is questioned by Alan Riding, New York Times journalist, as he takes him through the building, which was initially intended as a simple annex to the adjacent baroque Berlin Museum. His concept for the new wing, though, was intentionally so incompatible with the main building that there was no way to connect them above ground. To arrive in the Jewish Museum, visitors must enter through the 18th-century building and then descend to underground passageways and "voids," which in themselves give a strong sense of the tragic fate of the German-Jewish population during the Hitler years, even without any exhibitions in place. During this walking tour, Libeskind lays bare to Riding the entire architectural and philosophical concept of the building, an absolutely unique construct of innovation, intellectual prowess, and direct allusions to the lives and work of Berlin's pre-Nazi population of Jewish literati and artists, such as Walter Benjamin and Arnold Schonberg.
- Narrated by the architect himself, Frank Gehry: The Formative Years explores his long standing career and unique eye. The film looks at a number of Gehry's projects from private homes to complex public institutions, all of which echo his experimental style and vision. Works such as The Norton House, The Aerospace Museum and Loyola Law School demonstrate Gehry's eccentric and distinctive touch. The Formative Years is a survey of his beginnings when Gehry experimented with his own house in Santa Monica, giving him notoriety in the architecture scene.
- Known for his Pop imagery, avant-garde films, and enigmatic muses, Andy Warhol was a vital figure in the New York City art scene. Making a name for himself throughout the 1960's with his eccentric portrayal of commercialism and pop culture, Warhol soon became a much sought after artist, attracting the attention of both Manhattan's elite and those marginalized in society. In reference to Warhol's ability to draw a crowd, art critic David Bourdon observes, "I think Andy is quite conscious of everything that he's doing. He's a little but of a provocateur in that he always foresees what the reaction will be to a work before he starts it." (David Bourdon). Warhol predicted cultural and artistic trends while simultaneously holding a mirror up to those who perpetrated them. His iconic muses such as Candy Darling and Brigid Polk fueled his desire for artistic voyeurism and represented Warhol's aesthetic extremes. Through his Superstars Warhol both flirted with and mocked the idea of fame and what it meant to be "known" in a city like New York.
- In an effort to work without the distractions of the city, artist Carroll Dunham moved his studio from Manhattan to a small village in Connecticut, not far from where he grew up. Finding himself to be more at peace in the calm, rural setting, Dunham feels the freedom to create wildly bold and visually stimulating work, painting his way through expression and sexuality. Continuously holding a mirror up to society, Dunham aims to examine the ways in which we interpret images and ideas surrounding the physical human form and our contrived notions of appropriate depictions of it through art and media. Dunham's large canvas works are flooded with vivid color and striking imagery that grabs the attention of its audience and encourages a reconsideration of form and gaze. "The Artist's Studio: Carroll Dunham" documents a visit with critic Roberta Smith as she observes his new captivating work: a series entitled "In the Flowers" and a large canvas "The Beach".
- Pairing his collection of figurative paintings with an astute conversation surrounding mortality and humanity, "Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact" offers personal insight into the mind of an artist. In an interview led by friend and art critic, David Sylvester, Bacon opens up about his work and the, often times, grotesque and macabre tone of his paintings. His representations of the human figure in portraits and triptychs link him, in his view, to the distorted realism of Van Gogh and Picasso. With his unique take on life and death, Bacon explains to us the dichotomy of his art through an unexpectedly optimistic thesis which he dubbed the "brutality of fact". As Bacon's striking art conveys, with the acceptance of death comes a passionate vitality for life.