Elliott Erwitt - Silence Sounds Good

Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon

February 2016 •English

Sam Roddick explores the enduring appeal of Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus, one of the most celebrated paintings in western art. A joyous celebration of female sexuality, its journey to worldwide fame was far from straightforward and it lay in obscurity for centuries. Artist and entrepreneur Sam explains why Botticelli's nude was so revolutionary, and explores its impact on contemporary culture with artists such as Terry Gilliam, who memorably reinvented Venus for his Monty Python's Flying Circus animations.

Zaha Hadid... Who Dares Wins

July 2013 •English

Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.

Rene Magritte: Man in the Hat

May 2014 •English

In this film, Will Young travels to Magritte's native Belgium to find out more about the man whose trademark was a bowler hat and whose apparently conventional exterior concealed the mind of a subversive rebel. Will uncovers a childhood marked by tragedy, a marriage that lasted from Magritte's adolescence until his death in 1967, and a stunning artistic legacy which endures to this day.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

March 2010 •English

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock

January 2005 •English

BURNING MAN: BEYOND BLACK ROCK goes behind the scenes of a social revolution to explore the philosophy that fuels it, the social contract that drives it, and the transcendent experience that makes it a worldwide cultural force. Granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Burning Man organization, the filmmakers spent 18 months with the founders, organizers, artists and participants to document the full complexity and diversity of the Burning Man community. But, true to its title, the film goes beyond the city they raise in the desert - revealing the Burning Man's plans to bring its unique culture to the rest of the world. BEYOND BLACK ROCK tells, for the first time ever, the real story of Burning Man - from the inside out.

The Renaissance of Mata Ortiz

September 2010 •English

The Emmy-winning story of how an American treasure hunter and a Mexican artist transformed a dying desert village into a home for world-class art.

Statues Also Die

May 1953 •French

Short documentary commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine. From the question "Why is the African in the anthropology museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in the Louvre?", the directors expose and criticize the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.

Lamp

September 2003 •English

Short documentary of David Lynch building a lamp.

Achieving the Unachievable

September 2007 •English

M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?

All Rendered Truth: Folk Art in the American South

January 2009 •English

A film documenting the soulful art, environments, and voices of self-taught artists on the back roads of the American South.

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.

Hermitage: The Power of Art

October 2019 •Italian

32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide

November 2017 •English

Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

Fall 2

March 1970 •English

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

The Salt of the Earth

August 2014 •French

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

Everything at Once (Paco & Manolo's Gaze)

April 2021 •Spanish

Paco and Manolo are two Catalan photographers from the outskirts of Barcelona who have been working together for thirty years as if they were a single person, capturing their images in Kink magazine, a very personal photography fanzine with a homoerotic aesthetic of Mediterranean essence.

Standard Operating Procedure

February 2008 •English

Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Tales of the American

November 2017 •English

Seemayer Studios presents a new documentary about the American Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and the Arts District that surrounds it. Since 1979, the American Hotel has been the beating heart of a rich community of artists who began moving into the deserted factory buildings between Alameda and the Los Angeles River.

Basquiat, Une Vie

October 2010 •English

From Brooklyn to the Bronx, Soho to Greenwich, Union Square to Wall Street... Join us and the friends, collaborators and gallery owners who supported Jean-Michel Basquiat throughout his life. The first ever recognized graffiti artist, who saw international success as a neo-expressionist painter in the 80s, Basquiat is a true contemporary hero who died at the peak of his career.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

February 2017 •English

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.