The Naked Truth

A painter, a naked woman, and a camera. In this triple constellation we explore the power of the gaze and the roles it imposes on us. An artist's studio turns into the setting for questions about how we look at and perceive women. The naked skin of the model becomes the canvas for an audiovisual exploration of the ways in which seeing and being seen anchors us in our body. And how this body shapes our experience of the world and our role in it.

Canova

Palladio: The Power Of Architecture

Three restoration students and scholars from all over the world meet in a Palladian villa in view of a conference on Palladio. Meanwhile, in the United States of America, a young university professor asks his mentors, Kenneth Frampton and Peter Eisenman, how to be able to transmit Palladio's humanistic values to the new generations.

The Great Contemporary Art Bubble

On September 15th 2008, the day of the the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £60 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemporary art bubble, the greatest rise in the financial value of art in the history of the world. One art critic and film-maker was banned by Sotheby’s and Hirst from attending this historic auction: Ben Lewis.

A Test of Violence

Stuart Cooper's short about the work of Spanish artist Juan Genovés is an inspired introduction to the works of this extraordinary artist, exploring its minimalist aesthetic and storytelling qualities through a variety of cinematic techniques, including rostrum, animation, news footage and live action recreations.

Paula Rego: Telling Tales

Born in Portugal, Paula Rego is one of Britain's leading artists. This intimate film follows the artist from her retrospective in Madrid to the privacy of her studio in London while she talks with humor and candor about her compulsion to produce works that, though accessible, deal with the most private themes.

Jim Dine

Jim Dine at work and at home. Includes footage of Dine discussing his life, his artistic development, and what is called "ugly" in his work. Examines a number of Dine's works from different periods, including his tie paintings, tool paintings, palettes, collages, and "happenings," and considers Dine's concern with objects in his work.

Die Markus Family

This film tells the story of Markus Anatol Weisse, who, astonishingly enough, became an artist, in spite of being only very partially sighted. Markus also builds strange machine-like beings and wishes that he himself were a biological robot, or cyborg.

The Happiest Man on Earth

A lonely 40-year-old man sits on the balcony of a Finnish apartment building. Joonas Berghäll has learned that he will die in 14 years’ time, unless he changes his way of living or attitude towards life. Joonas wants to make a film about the state of wellbeing of Finnish men, drawing from his own experiences and mirroring the society at large. The film is built around six stories. It starts with the context of school and proceeds through the contexts of military service, custody battle, burnout and substance abuse to end on the subject of premature death caused by health problems.

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.

Larry Wessel's Palace of Wonders

Larry Wessel invites you to explore the phantasmagorical worlds created by a variety of artists, writers, photographers, musicians and collectors.

Fall 2

Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.

I'm Too Sad to Tell You

This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.

The Grapes of Wrath: The Ghost of Modern America

In April 1939, "Grapes of Wrath" entered the pantheon of literature with a bang. Americans are at loggerheads over the odyssey of the Joad family, tenant farmers from Oklahoma who, like thousands of others, were driven from their land during the Great Depression. Eighty years have passed since the famous work was published, and 90 years since the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. To mark this occasion, the documentary examines the genesis of the novel, its themes, its renewed reception during the financial crisis of 2008.

Once Upon a Time... "Loveless"

A documentary about the Russian movie "Loveless" by Andrey Zvyagintsev

Circle of Light

This film without words is composed of Pamela Bone's unique photograhic transparencies. Her talent has been said to 'push photography beyond its own limits, liberating it to the status of an entirely creative art form.' Inspired by nature, and being more responsive to feeling than to thought, Miss Bone has sought to express the mystery and beauty of the inner vision through photographic means alone: landscape has the quality of a dream; children on the sea-shore have a sense of their own enchantment, trees are forboding and strange when night moves in their arms. It took Miss Bone twenty years to find the right technique and so overcome the limitations that photography would impose.