Shot in the Dark

The Last Piece: Essay I

June 2022 •Spanish

Disrupt, reject, destroy, avoid: At the interrupted rhythm of the broken photographs that a granddaughter has rescued from her grandfather’s hands, the last piece reconstructs the memory of an older man who has decided to leave behind his life impulses to surrender to sleep and calm. An essay on the act of joining our memories, the illusion of remembering and the freedom to forget.

Love, Cecil

December 2017 •English

A documentary about Academy Award-winning costume designer Cecil Beaton. A respected photographer, artist, and set designer, Beaton was best known for designing on award-winning films such as 'Gigi' (1958) and 'My Fair Lady' (1964). The film features archive footage and interviews with a number of models, artists, and filmmakers who worked closely with Beaton during his illustrious career.

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

May 2007 •English

An account of the professional and personal life of renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz, from her early artistic endeavors to her international success as a photojournalist, war reporter, and pop culture chronicler.

Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde

April 1997 •English

Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.

Soviet Bus Stops

May 2024 •English

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

Witkin & Witkin

October 2017 •English

A pair of identical twins, one a photographer and the other a painter, have very little in common.

Smash His Camera

July 2010 •English

A film centering on the life and work of Ron Galella that examines the nature and effect of paparazzi.

Moments Without Proper Names

January 1987 •English

Parks makes himself the subject, tracing his development as a person and an artist through a non-narrative abstract self-portrait that combines his photographs with his poetry, musical compositions and scenes from his films. It also features footage of Parks, plus interpretations of his personal reminiscences performed by actors Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca.

Naked Ambition: Bunny Yeager

November 2023 •English

Bunny Yeager, once heralded as the world's prettiest photographer, had a huge influence in 20th-century pop culture though few people know her name. Whether by popularizing the bikini, helping discover Bettie Page, shaping the image of Playboy or inventing the selfie, Bunny was a trailblazer whose work bucked against conservative 1950s America and helped pave the way for the feminist movement and the sexual revolution. Yet the very changes she helped usher in would soon render her a forgotten relic...till now.

Notarangelo the Soul Hunter

May 2019 •Italian

David Griecos documentary showcases the underappreciated photography of Domenico Notarangelo, and through it, tells the story of Matera, it's people and it's history.

Quattro Quinti

October 2023 •Italian

Reporters

June 1981 •French

The co-founder of the Gamma press agency, Raymond Depardon, created this documentary of press photographers in Paris and their subjects by following the photographers around for one month, in October, 1980. In-between long hours waiting for a celebrity to emerge from a restaurant or a hotel, boredom immediately switches to fast action as the cameras click and roll when the person appears. The reaction to the gaggle of photographers is as varied as the people they often literally chase all around town. While some of the celebrities, such as Jacques Chirac who was mayor of Paris at the time, are perceived as comical caricatures, others are shown simply going about ordinary pursuits - including Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly, and Jean-Luc Godard.

Seeing Through the Darkness

May 2025 •Ukrainian

Carried by an immersive sound environment that plunges us in the reality and the perceptions of these resilient and inspiring people, this film questions our own blindness face to violence and suffering of our time — despite the overabundance of images that reach us — and highlights the urgency of lending an ear to hear these stories.

Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable

September 2018 •English

Freyer Artist. Iconoclast. Man of his time. All Things are Photographable is a revealing documentary portrait of the life and work of acclaimed photographer Garry Winogrand – the epic storyteller in pictures of America across three turbulent decades.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

January 1985 •English

Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.

Instant Dreams

December 2017 •English

There could hardly be a more telling contrast between the analog and digital eras than the beautifully blurry memories captured in a Polaroid picture and the thousands of pin-sharp photos on an iPhone. In this ambitious visual essay, Willem Baptist explores the visionary genius of Edwin H. Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. Even today, all sorts of people are keeping his instant dream alive. Former Polaroid employee Stephen Herchen moved from the United States to Europe to work in a laboratory developing the 2.0 version of Polaroid. Christopher Bonanos, the author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, tells us, "When I heard Polaroid would stop making film, it felt like a close friend had died." Artist Stefanie Schneider, who is working with the last of her stock of Polaroid film, is using the blurring that occurs with expired film as an additional aesthetic layer in her photographic work.

Nude

October 2017 •English

NUDE explores perceptions of nudity in art by chronicling the creative process of photographer David Bellemere as he's commissioned by NU Muses founder Steve Shaw to shoot a fine art calendar of nude photographs.

Un été à la Garoupe

November 2020 •French

La Garoupe, a beach in Antibes, in 1937. For one summer, the painter and photographer Man Ray films his friends Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch, as well as Lee Miller. During these few weeks, love, friendship, poetry, photography and painting are still mixed in the carefree and the creativity specific to the artistic movements of the interwar period.

Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum

May 2017 •French

The film tells the story of the intimate and unprecedented encounter between the photojournalists of the Magnum Agency and the world of cinema. The confrontation of two seemingly opposite worlds – fiction and reality. For 70 years their paths crossed: a family of photographers, amongst them the biggest names in photography, and a family of actors and filmmakers who helped write the history of cinema, from John Huston to Marilyn Monroe to Orson Welles, Kate Winslet and Sean Penn.

Bettie Page: Pin Up Queen

January 1998 •English

Bettie Page was the top pin-up queen of the 50s and developed a cult following in the 80s. She is known for her distinctive hair style and is reputed to be the most photographed pin-up model of all time. This compilation shows Bettie's playful side, featuring her scenes from the full-length burlesque films Striporama (1953), Varietease (1954) and Teaserama (1955) and a dozen complete short films from the 50s including Tantalizing Betty Dances Again, Tambourine Dance, Joyful Dance by Betty, Betty's Hat Dance, Dream Dance by Betty, Dance of Passion, Betty's Clown Dance Part 2, Betty's Lingerie Tease Dance, Betty's Second G-String Dance, Betty's Fireplace Dance, and Pin-Up Beauties Fight (with June King).