A manufactured memory.
A documentary portrait of Utopia, loosely framed by Plato’s invocation of the lost continent of Atlantis in 360 BC and its re-resurrection via a 1970s science fiction pulp novel.
No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.
This 56-minute documentary on America's most controversial and unique composer manages to cover a great many aspects of Cage's work and thought. His love for mushrooms, his Zen beliefs and use of the I Ching, and basic bio details are all explained intelligently and dynamically. Black Mountain, Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Duchamp are mentioned. Yoko Ono, John Rockwell, Laurie Anderson, Richard Kostelanetz make appearances. Fascinating performance sequences include Margaret Leng-Tan performing on prepared piano, Merce Cunningham and company, and performances of Credo In Us, Water Music, and Third Construction. Demystifies the man who made music from silence, from all sounds, from life.
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?
To celebrate its 250th anniversary, this documentary tells the story of one of the world’s greatest museums, from its foundation by Catherine the Great, though to its status today as a breathtakingly beautiful complex which includes the Winter Palace. Showcasing a vast collection of the world’s greatest artworks together with contemporary art galleries and exhibitions, it holds over 3 million treasures and world class masterpieces in stunning architectural settings. This is its journey from Imperial Palace to State Museum, encompassing a sometimes troubled past, surviving both the Revolution in 1916 and the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in 1941-44.
The last woman on Earth: Filmed inside Biosphere 2 in Arizona, Urth forms a cinematic meditation on ambitious experiments, constructed environments and visions of the future. The film considers what an endeavor such as Biosphere 2 might mean today and in the near future, in terms of humankind’s relationship with the natural world.
An experimental and poetic portrait of a woman.
Documentary about Dario Argento, "Profondo Rosso" shop in Rome, and most important works throughout his career.
Somewhere, a young man is asleep, his room illuminated green by the ficker of his computer screensaver. Even the night sky resembles its digital replication. Anthropological observations on sleep in the age of technology, and the ways in which it substitute natural environments…
A film by Philip Hoffman that chronicles the final days of his father.
Can you remember what you were doing on 15th March 2003? Or what the weather was like on 30th May 2007? Twenty-year-old British student Aurelien can. He is one of a handful of people in the world baffling scientists with their ability to recall an incredible amount of their lives. This remarkable documentary explores the recently discovered phenomenon known as superior autobiographical memory.
Memory prevents rest and a woman about to die takes advantage of cinema to tell her story (inseparable from that of Franco’s Spain) and to say goodbye. A terrace as a border and a song that crosses time. At home, nothing is always—and everything is still—in the present and defunct now. A home movie of ghosts, a generous gesture of intimacy and solidarity that not witnesses two people at the end of their long lives, but also reveals the weight of history and of the 20th century, which is always present today.
Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.
A live telecast of the public memorial service for the king of pop, Michael Jackson.
Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.
A docudrama about art and creativity; based on modern art gallery in Tehran and its founder Jazeh Tabatabai.