Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood

Basquiat: Rage to Riches

October 2017 •English

This film tells Jean-Michel's story through exclusive interviews with his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before agreed to be interviewed for a TV documentary. With striking candour, Basquiat's art dealers - including Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger - as well as his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists, expose the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat confronted on a daily basis. As historical tableaux, visual diaries of defiance or surfaces covered with hidden meanings, Basquiat's art remains the beating heart of this story.

The Great Ordinary Movie

February 1971 •French

The Ordinary Grand Film is the result of love at first sight with The Ordinary Grand Circus. With film and equipment borrowed from left and right, with the free complicity of all those who appear in the credits, they went on weekends to film a few moments of their tour.

Constable: A Country Rebel

September 2014 •English

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

Giacometti

January 1967 •English

The Arts Council commissioned this film to coincide with their major retrospective of Giacometti's work at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in the summer of 1965. A similar exhibition was held concurrently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sealing the artist's reputation as a modern master.

Alfons Mucha

January 1980 •Czech

Philippe-Alain Michaud, le réel traversé par la fiction

January 2016 •French

To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.

The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci

April 2018 •English

Janina Ramirez explores the BBC archives to create a TV history of Leonardo Da Vinci, discovering what lies beneath the Mona Lisa and even how he acquired his anatomical knowledge.

Manet: Portraying Life

April 2013 •English

Manet’s portraits are rarely afforded such close attention as they are given in this exquisitely crafted and insightful film presented by art expert Tim Marlow. Manet’s portraiture comprised about half his work, giving life on canvas to family, friends and the literary, political and artistic figures of the day.

The Past Is a Grotesque Animal

June 2014 •English

A personal, accessible look at an artist - Kevin Barnes, frontman of the endlessly versatile indie pop band of Montreal - whose pursuit to make transcendent music at all costs drives him to value art over human relationships. As he struggles with all of those around him, family and bandmates alike, he's forced to reconsider the future of the band, begging the question - is this really worth it?

Pierre Bonnard : les couleurs de l'intime

January 2015 •French

How did Bonnard, one of the great masters of 20th-century painting, a secretive, anxious man with an ordinary everyday life, become this undisputed painter of intimacy, capable of transforming reality into a unique and incandescent world? Through his paintings, but also his private journals, his correspondence with Matisse and Vuillard, the photographs he loved, and the places where he lived, the film immerses us in the world of this master of color.

The Way South

January 1981 •Dutch

Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later, he fused the three parts into one long movie.

Agnes Martin Before the Grid

September 2016 •English

Agnes Martin is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Before she died in 2004 at the age of 92, her paintings sold for millions of dollars and were displayed in the world's greatest museums. Through interviews with her friends, lovers, and classmates who knew her well, insight is gained into Agnes Martin's personality and the development of her creative process before she became known for her grid paintings.

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.

Alain Delon, a unique portrait

November 2015 •French

Biography of a star and figure study : This fascinating portrait is for anyone who wants to know more about the man behind the mask. By the end of the film, you will view this famous French icon in a totally different light. Delon speaks in a series of surprising interviews, spanning nearly 50 years.

Faces Places

June 2017 •French

Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

Sarcophagus for a Queen

September 2019 •Czech

Bjørn Nørgaard and a team of Czech glass artists in the demanding process of creating a grave monument for Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark.

Odvaha

July 2016 •Czech

Gerhard Richter: 4 Decades

February 2005 •English

Curator Robert Storr takes us through the 2002 MoMA Gerhard Richter retrospective.

The Art of Self-Harm

November 2023 •English

The Art of Self-Harm is an uncompromising and unflinching look at the art collective known as "White Gardenia". A group of artists who explore their cathartic expressions through acts of blood drinking, self-mutilation, and other forms of paraphilia. This documentary takes an in-depth look at this groups body of work, as well as conducts detailed interviews with group members to understand the inspirations and motivations behind the art that is "White Gardenia".

I'll be your mirror

April 2021 •German

The artist Johanna Faust is about to leave her children to finally devote herself to her art again. A vague memory comes to her mind: Didn't her grandmother do the same thing, with terrible consequences? The intimate road movie tells of lost mothers and abandoned children, of the temptations and the price of self-fulfilment, of the abysses of motherhood and of the deep longing for another life.