Kutlug Ataman (2011)

Looking for Modern Art: Rethinking Art History

Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?

The Thought Of Art

Research and dissemination documentary-film about contemporary art in which more than 30 staff members of museums and galleries, visual and sound artists, collectors, art critics and curators share their knowledge and give an account of their experiences and anecdotes.

Battlefield Gender

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.

Beijo de Borboleta

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War of Art

What happens when a group of international artists travel to North Korea to create art like the regime have never seen before? While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in a creative exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where abstract art is forbidden.

Les Couturiers de l'Église

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Marcel Duchamp: The Art of the Possible

A remarkable walk through the life and work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), one of the most important creators of the 20th century, revolutionary of arts, aesthetics and pop culture.

Jeff Wall: Retrospective

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.

Le Musée et le Milliardaire anticonformiste

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Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.

Mitterrand, président culturel

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.

El Cuerpo del Escándalo - Un film acerca de Natacha Voliakovsky

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Jaar. Lament of the Images

Follows Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar as he finds his artistic voice and develops the socially critical perspective of his work.

Portrait of the King as a Child

In 1983, Franz Paludetto acquired Rivara Castle at the foot of the Italian Alps. A century earlier, artists from all over Europe had gathered here to establish the Rivara School of Painting. We witness the story of Italy during the latter half of the 20th century.

Thomas Hirschhorn – Gramsci Monument

Thomas Hirschhorn, one of the few Swiss artists of world renown, often touches on social wounds with his provocative works. In 2013, Hirschhorn built a monument for Italian philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci in a public housing project in the Bronx. The contentious artist collaborated with neighborhood residents whose everyday life is impacted by poverty, unemployment and crime. Conflicts and misunderstandings are bound to arise as Hirschhorn’s absolute devotion to art is confronted with the resident’s lack of prospects and fatalistic outlooks. The «Gramsci Monument» becomes a summer-long experiment where diverse worlds collide: blacks and whites, the art elite and street kids, party people and poets, politicians and philosophers. A nuanced film about art, politics and passion.

Black President

Exiled, yet internationally celebrated Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai's demons come to life as he tries to flee South Africa following increasingly fractious experiences on the Johannesburg art scene. His greatest demon “Black Guilt” is one he can never shake off, this burden of having to speak for his people. But Is this responsibility really a burden at all, or is it actually a superpower? Either way, will Kudzi ever be President of His Own State of Being?

Apple Pie

Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Structured around the ten most significant celestial bodies of the Milky Way, Apple Pie’s inquiry begins with the furthest point in our solar system, Pluto, as a lens back towards our home planet and the ‘mechanisms by which certain aspects of scientific knowledge are digested, appropriated and subsequently manifest within the general human complex’. Christopher Francis Schiel’s dry, functional narration brings a network of ideas about our existence into focus, while Hamilton’s visual tableaux, as an extension of his multifaceted practice, veer imaginatively between psychedelic imagery and performance art.

BLACKland

The film is a stage play hybrid showcasing dark and absurd sketches based on contemporary Hungarian news of the 2000's with campy, senseless musical interludes in-between. Highly experimental in nature that - like Marmite - will split its' crowd into ones that'll love it and others that'll loathe it. There's no middle grounds here. The topics included are: The Hungarian Olympians' doping scandal, political terrorism, the national elections... and more.

Cremaster 2

CREMASTER 2 (1999) is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1 ...

Cremaster 3

CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...

Solar Beats

Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify - and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.

Tower Bawher

This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art and is filled with visual references to artists of the era, including Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova.

The Dog’s Leash

The bell tower rings and the birds fly away. In the countryside on the outskirts of a small village, a dog tied to a very long rope, watches them disappear in the horizon. It’s time for him to go. Prance across fields. How far will his rope allow him to go?

Florentina's Workout Naif

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The Ferryman

In between performance, dance and cerémonies, "The Ferryman” is a choreographic exploration of rituals and animistic roots, a luxurious visualisation of a bewitchment and an exorcism of a man-deer in the borders of the world.

What if Women Ruled the World?

A pioneering force in feminist art for more than four decades, Judy Chicago paved the way for generations of women artists. She decided to join forces with Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova to inspire people to imagine a different, more humane world.

Dom Juan

Escorted by his valet Sganarelle, Dom Juan, a libertine gentleman, brave and hypocritical, seduces women, fights duels, denies his father's authority, and mocks Heaven. Carried away by his passion for women and gambling, he goes so far as to commit perjury. A classic revisited by Mesguich with a lot of visual effects: special effects, magic tricks, imposing sets. A playful staging for this tragi-comic play.

Untitled

A painter in the throes of a creative block finds inspiration thanks to a fascinating and mysterious gallery owner, but he can't expect the shocking consequences of their encounter.

Streetwalkin' Cowboy

A delusional man in a modern day city dresses, acts like, and has the mindset of a cowboy.

Quando Eles Saem de Casa

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Killing for Love

Derek and Nancy Haysom were brutally murdered in their house in Lynchburg, Virginia, on March 30, 1985. Suspicion fell on their daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Jens Söring. They flee to Europe, but are caught and extradited to the U.S. Elizabeth is sentenced to 90 years in jail for incitement to murder, Jens Söring to two life sentences. Karin Steinberger, Marcus Vetter and their team spent over three years researching this case, which achieved world-wide notoriety. They uncovered new evidence, including the fact none of the blood samples found at the scene of the crime belonged to Jens Söring.

Notes on an American Film Director at Work

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows his friend, film director Martin Scorsese, and his cast and crew, through various locations during the shooting of his film The Departed, released in 2006.