Isabel & Roy

Roundabout Art(de)

In Europe, road junctions have become public art galleries. A road trip across France, Switzerland, the Canary Islands, Greece and Germany exploring the glorious world of roundabout art.

Being and Becoming Chua Ek Kay(en)

The film offers exclusive and intimate insights into how and why the classically trained artist risked rejection to revolutionize the traditional Chinese ink art form in Singapore.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism(en)

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

When the Cows Come Home(en)

When the Cows Come Home introduces audiences to Tilly and Maggie, a pair of cows that musician, journalist, artist and cow whisperer, Andrew Johnstone has befriended and subsequently saved from slaughter. The garrulous herdsman is enthusiastic to expound his views on animal husbandry, bovine communication and the vagaries of life in general, before the film walks us back through the events that have shaped the singular farmer-philosopher. From personal family tragedy to warring with Catholic school authorities, innovating in Hamilton’s nascent music scene to creating guerrilla art installations; Johnstone’s life has had a truly idiosyncratic trajectory. Mental health issues may have seen him retreat to life on the farm, but the film makes clear its subject’s restless inquisitiveness is far from being put out to pasture.

Matthew Perry: Not just Friends(en)

Caravage - Dans la splendeur des ombres(fr)

Gauguin: A Dangerous Life(en)

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.

We Remember Marilyn(en)

We Remember Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe transforms from Norma Jean, a cuddly teenager, into the most recognizable face and body in the world in these home movies, photos and film clips which span her early bit parts to her most known roles.

The Story Won't Die(en)

THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.

Fellini, confidences retrouvées(fr)

Federico Fellini died on October 31st, 1993. Thirty years later, he is still considered as one of the most irreverant moviemaker in the history of cinema. Through a long-previously-unseen interview, directed by Jean-Christophe Rosé in 1981, through extracts of his films and through behind-the-scenes, this documentary draws an intimate portrait of Fellini by himself.

Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon(en)

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.

Rene Magritte: Man in the Hat(en)

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.

Drawing the Line: A Portrait of Keith Haring(en)

Short documentary about artist Keith Haring, detailing his involvement in the New York City graffiti subculture, his opening of the Pop Shop, and the social commentary present in his paintings and drawings.

Tous Les Jours(en)

In rocky Newfoundland, renowned French artist Jean Claude Roy gathers his paints and sets off to face the day. Whether it be freezing snow, violent wind, or pouring rain, he commits vibrant colors to canvas and conquers the day by weaving crooked beauty out of difficulties.

The Great Ice-Cream Robbery(en)

Two screens of film about - and sometimes shot by - Claes Oldenburg, detailing his inspiration, his methods and his relationship with his partner Hannah Wilke.

Cocteau - Al Brown: the Poet and the Boxer(fr)

Portrait of Panama Al Brown, a great boxer in the 30's, and its story with France, with a focus on its relationship with Jean Cocteau, surrealist, poet, director, artist.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, artiste absolu(fr)

The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.

Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous(en)

Mark Rothko, a master of abstract expressionism, created 835 paintings during his five-decade career.

Metamorphic(es)

Octavio Ocampo is the creator of the metamorphic style painting technique, a technique of overlapping and juxtaposing realistic and figurative details within the images he creates. This is his story.

Eating Sea Urchins(xx)

A surrealist home movie, filmed by Luis Buñuel in Cadaqués in 1930, focusing on Salvador Dalí's father and his wife.