Stuff

Eskimo Artist: Kenojuak

January 1964 •English

This documentary shows how an Inuit artist's drawings are transferred to stone, printed and sold. Kenojuak Ashevak became the first woman involved with the printmaking co-operative in Cape Dorset. This film was nominated for the 1963 Documentary Short Subject Oscar.

The Living Stone

February 1958 •English

The Living Stone is a 1958 Canadian short documentary film directed by John Feeney about Inuit art. It shows the inspiration behind Inuit sculpture. The Inuit approach to the work is to release the image the artist sees imprisoned in the rough stone. The film centres on an old legend about the carving of the image of a sea spirit to bring food to a hungry camp. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Inventata da un dio distratto

December 2001 •Italian

This film is dedicated to Maria Lai, an artist born in 1919 in Ulassai, Sardinia. Surrounded and inspired by the ogliastra countryside, the cyclopic guardian of plots and landslides, Maria Lai uses inert materials like stone, concrete, asphalt, metal and wood to work old and new legends into librettos of individual works, installations and interventions, thus becoming part of the landscape that calls to her. In making this film the authors have confided in the artist’s role as a spokeperson, and it is as if one is listening to the voice of a wild olive tree - both millenary and contemporary - a voice that knows what to say (and can say whatever it wants) from beyond the boundaries of reality, history, nature and art. As that tree, the artist - confident of her roots - with a sound sense of rhythm and scansion, multiplies big and small stories, just as she did with the bread and fish in Santa Barbara di Ulassai along the way to the country church.

The Witch of Kings Cross

September 2020 •English

Sydney, in the 50s. Rosaleen Norton is a painter specialised in occult themes, infernal sabbatical visions exuding wanton sexuality. In conservative Australia, the Witch of King's Cross was soon accused of obscenity, and of taking part in satanic rituals, orgies and whatnot...

Dig!

May 2004 •English

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

David Hockney: Joiner Photographs

July 1983 •English

David Hockney is unquestionably one of the most passionate and versatile experimental artists on the contemporary scene. In the late 1970s the British artist developed a pioneering concept which also changed his perspective on painting – his “joiners”. In this film, the artist himself talks about this photographic approach, a kind of Cubism-inspired photocollage which explores the space-time continuum. Hockney allows the viewer to share in the creative “joiner” process and leads us step by step into the universe of his artistic creativity.

Baldiga: Unlocked Heart

November 2024 •German

Using diary excerpts, photographs and memories from companions, the film paints the portrait of the artist Jürgen Baldiga who sensitively and authentically captured the West Berlin queer scene of the 1980s and early 1990s with his camera.

Sulle tracce di Maria Lai

February 2020 •Italian

The film reconstructs with care and tactile and optical sensuality the path and legacy of a unique figure of woman and artist: from the turn of the sixties with the "Looms", the "Sewn Canvas", the "Breads", the "Scriptures", the collective action carried out with the citizens of Ulassai in 1981 ("Tying to the mountain"), which anticipates relational art, one of the main artistic currents of the late twentieth century, by a decade. The repertoire materials and landscapes integrate the chorus of testimonies from friends, collaborators, artists, and critics with the same mysterious serenity of the artist's voice.

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

February 2008 •German

North by Current

March 2021 •English

Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.

Leonor Fini

May 1988 •French

Portrait of an Artist

Woodstock

March 1970 •English

An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.

New York is Now

January 2011 •English

Artist, musician and art magazine publisher Noah Becker gives us an art world insider's view of New York based contemporary art in 2011. Important New York based curators, critics and auction houses lend their views on New York's relevance as an international art scene in relation to globalized culture. Other topics include art value and how contemporary art is presented to the public through pop culture and the media. Featuring interviews with art world figures including Lee Ranaldo, Richard Phillips, Michael Halsband, Spencer Tunick, Bibbe Hansen, Bill Powers and Richard Butler. Musical performances by Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth with additional music by Moka Only and Noah Becker.

Biafra

May 2015 •English

An unnamed graffiti artist produces a new piece in the biting cold of Minneapolis. Despite the illegality of his medium and the harshness of his environment, the film captures why the artist chooses to create on his own terms.

Hockney at the Tate

October 1988 •English

To mark his fiftieth birthday in 1988, London's Tate Gallery staged a major retrospective of his work. Melvyn Bragg joined David Hockney for an exclusive private view of the exhibition and they were filmed discussing pictures from all stages of Hockney's remarkable career.

Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty

October 2020 •French

The whole world knows him. Burlesque comedy genius, popular actor, author, director, producer, composer, choreographer, Charlie Chaplin (1899-1977) used his talent to serve an ideal of justice and freedom. But his best scenario was his own destiny, a story written into the political and artistic history of the 20th century.

A Time for Making

October 2018 •English

Nine artisans on secluded Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and authentic locally handmade through intimate portraits of their work and lifestyle.

I Was Possessed by God

January 2000 •English

On Valentine's Day, 1993, Caveh Zahedi decided to ingest 5 grams (a very large dose) of hallucinogenic mushrooms. For the first time in his mushroom-taking history, he had an experience of "divine possession," in which he felt that a divine being took possession of his body and spoke through him, in a voice that was not his, and with knowledge that he himself did not possess. He later tried several times to repeat the experience. I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is the documentary record of one such attempt.

Joe Fafard, selfie

May 2019 •French

How Safe Are My Drugs?

December 2014 •English

With more people taking a wider range of drugs than ever before, Radio 1 DJ B. Traits meets users and dealers to find out how much they really know about their drugs - and whether they're safe. After a decade working in some of the biggest clubs in the world, she worries that many people have no idea what they're taking, and are being sold drugs that aren't what they think.