Degas: Passion for Perfection (2018)

The Art of Acid

Mark McCloud is the world's leading collector Of LSD art. His 'Institute of Illegal Images' has over 30,000 framed hits of acid and traces the history of the drug's cultural influence through the unique art form used in its distribution - blotter art. After enduring and defeating aggressive prosecutions by law enforcement seeking to put him behind bars for life, Mark now appears to be more of a visionary than an outlaw and his museum has become a place of pilgrimage for believers in LSD's spiritual power.

Gauguin: A Dangerous Life

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.

Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World

Alastair Sooke champions pop art as one of the most important art forms of the twentieth century, peeling back pop's frothy, ironic surface to reveal an art style full of subversive wit and radical ideas. In charting its story, Alastair brings a fresh eye to the work of pop art superstars Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and tracks down pop's pioneers, from American artists like James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Ed Ruscha to British godfathers Peter Blake and Allen Jones. Alastair also explores how pop's fascination with celebrity, advertising and the mass media was part of a global art movement, and he travels to China to discover how a new generation of artists are reinventing pop art's satirical, political edge for the 21st century.

The Painter and the Thief

When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police are able to find the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Over three years, the cinematic documentary follows the incredible story of the artist looking for her stolen paintings, while at the same time turning the thief into art.

Hinter dem Vorhang: Das Geheimnis Vermeer

Plot unavailable

Canaletto & the Art of Venice

EXHIBITION ON SCREEN open its fifth season with Canaletto & the Art of Venice, an immersive journey into the life and art of Venice’s famous view-painter. No artist better captures the essence and allure of Venice than Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. The remarkable group of over 200 paintings, drawings and prints on display offer unparalleled insight into the artistry of Canaletto and his contemporaries, and the city he became a master at capturing. The film also offers the chance to step inside two official royal residences - Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – to learn more about the artist, and Joseph Smith, the man who introduced Canaletto to Britain.

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.

Konrad Mägi

A documentary made for Konrad Mägi exhibition "The Light of the North" in Torino, Musei Reali (2019-2020), about Mägi's life and his legacy.

Renoir and the Girl with a Blue Ribbon

This documentary follows three parallel stories. First, that of the masterpiece, The Little Girl with the Blue Ribbon, this melancholic Renoir work with the "musical face" described by Henri Michaux. The painting was constantly tossed around, shelved by its patrons, looted by the Nazis, found by the Monument Men, recovered by the family, sold to a controversial collector, before finally arriving at the Kunsthaus Zurich. We also discover the painter's biography, and the eventful life of his model, Irene Cahen d'Anvers. Born into the Jewish upper middle class, this free and divorced woman long disowned the painting and left it to her daughter, who was murdered at Auschwitz. Discover the tumultuous journey of this painting, its model, Irene Cahen d'Anvers, and its connection to the dark hours of the Nazi regime.

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.

Tinkebell - Who Killed the Blue Bird?

Artist Katinka Simonse, alias Tinkebell, is a controversial, very mediagenic phenomenon. In her universe there is no distinction between life, art and activism; Tinkebell is her own work of art. Everything she encounters on her life path can become part of her story. Filmmaker Judith de Leeuw was given access to all images about Tinkebell, including her entire private archive. She thus constructed an archive film about how as a human being, living on the ruins of the past, you can be a character in your own story. What is the price you can afford if you continue to believe at any cost?

Hadj Nasreddine Dinet

Étienne Dinet, born March 28, 1861 in Paris, where he died on December 24, 1929, was a French painter and lithographer. Having lived much of his life in Algeria and recognized during his lifetime, he called himself Nasreddine Dinet after converting to Islam.

Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous

Mark Rothko, a master of abstract expressionism, created 835 paintings during his five-decade career.

Lamp

Short documentary of David Lynch building a lamp.