Shut Up and Play the Piano

The documentary follows Chilly Gonzales from his native Canada to late '90s underground Berlin, and via Paris to the world's great philharmonic halls. Diving deep into the dichotomy of Gonzales' stage persona, where self-doubt and megalomania are just two sides of the same coin.

Caravaggio - L'anima e il sangue

An exciting and unsettling cinematic journey through the life, work and torments of Caravaggio.

George

In 1961 Lithuanian American artist and impresario George Maciunas established the avant-garde art movement Fluxus. George details the rise of Fluxus following a sensationalized tour of “concerts” in Europe in 1962, and continuing in New York for most of the 1960s and ’70s. During this time Maciunas was converting the dying industrial buildings of Soho into a network of artists’ lofts, creating one of the first official real estate co-ops of artist-owned buildings. Maciunas’s life and legacy—as recounted by artists of his generation, including Yoko Ono and Jonas Mekas—ignited debates that remain pivotal to artists working today.

Meow Wolf: Origin Story

When a group of young DIY artists in Santa Fe can’t find a door into the art world, they blow open an entirely new portal with their grit, passion, and tenacity. Within just a few short years – and with a little help from George R.R. Martin – this group called Meow Wolf ultimately hits a cultural nerve and garners massive, unexpected success with their exhibit, House of Eternal Return.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter

Interviews with the junior designers swept into the 24-7 world of "The Eamery" are the heart of this complex picture of a husband-and-wife creative team that define the era of Mid-Century Modernism. Narrated by James Franco, the film draws from a trove of archival material, primarily the stunning films and photographs produced in mind-boggling volume by Charles, Ray, and their staff during the hyper-creative forty years of the Eames Office.

Elmyr de Hory, le faussaire du siècle

He was the master forger of the 20th century: the Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory. We will probably never know how many works by Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani still hang in museums and private collections. In addition to the life story of de Hory, the documentary also follows the paths of the two art swindlers Fernand Legros and Réal Lessard. In the style of an exciting investigation, the documentary traces the lives of three enigmatic figures: Those of the Hungarian painter and art forger Elmyr de Hory, the Frenchman Fernand Legros, also a famous art fraudster, and the Canadian Réal Lessard, also an art forger and lover of Legros. Legros was a character straight out of a novel: a millionaire at the age of 25 and a homosexual dandy who loved luxury limousines, fur coats, cigars, lavish parties and a relaxed lifestyle. He had an affair with Legros, but Elmyr de Hory may also have fallen in love with him.

Hitler contro Picasso e gli altri

In 1937 the Nazi regime held two exhibitions in Munich: one to stigmatize “Degenerate Art” (which they systematically looted and destroyed) and one, personally curated by Hitler, to glorify “Classic Art”. This immersive new documentary reveals the Nazi’s complicated relationship with classical and modern art, displaying an incredible number of masterpieces by Botticelli, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Chagall, Renoir and Gauguin amongst others, intertwined with human stories from the most infamous period of the twentieth century. A state-of-the-art detective story exploring the Nazis’ obsession with creative expression, Hitler versus Picasso combines history, art and human drama for an unforgettable cinema experience.

Toda Aspereza

An unnamed passer-by is forced to trace a circular route inside an abandoned tram station, facing loss and time. The broken walls act as a channel, transmitting fragmentary, blurred and analogical memories. 

Hands of History

This documentary follows four female First Nations artists—Doreen Jensen, Rena Point Bolton, Jane Ash Poitras and Joane Cardinal-Schubert are First Nations artists who seek to find a continuum from traditional to contemporary forms of expression. These exceptional artists reveal their philosophies as artists, their techniques and creative styles, and the exaltation they feel when they create. A moving testimony to the role that Indigenous women artists have played in maintaining the voice of their culture.

Mário Eloy - Um Pintor em Fuga

Documentary about the life and work of Mário Eloy, one of the greatest painters of the second generation of modernism in Portugal.

Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art

The titular troublemakers are the New York–based Land (aka Earth) artists of the 1960s and 70s, who walked away from the reproducible and the commodifiable, migrated to the American Southwest, worked with earth and light and seemingly limitless space, and rethought the question of scale and the relationships between artist, landscape, and viewer. Director James Crump has meticulously constructed Troublemakers from interviews (with Germano Celant, Virginia Dwan, and others), photos and footage of Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Charles Ross among others at work on their astonishing creations.

El Perdó

Andrés Rabadán was headline news after killing his father with a crossbow. But beyond the chatter of the media, what is the true story of the young man who became known as the “maniac with the crossbow”?

北斎

A documentary about the life and art of wood-block artist Katsushika Hokusai.

いけばな

The history and art of ikebana, a centuries old Japanese art of flower arrangement and a look inside the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, where the director's father Sofu Teshigahara worked as the grand master of the school.

Adventures in Plymptoons!

A documentary film about Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton. This is a portrait piece that includes interviews with family, friends, colleagues, critics, and fans.

Mondongo II: Retrato de Mondongo

“This is a film about the end of a friendship. It wasn’t meant to be. Fifteen years ago, they painted my portrait.” (Mariano Llinás)

KIM

Costakis: The Collector

One public housing flat in Moscow stood out above all others: the home of George Costakis, the foremost collector of early 20th century Russian avant-garde art. Its walls were crowded with banned and forgotten works by artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky, Chagall, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, and Kliun; public figures such as Edward Kennedy, Stravinsky, and Alfred Barr visited. Barrie Gavin met the collector in 1982 at his home in Athens. Costakis, a Greek born in Russia, passionately shares his story and those of the great Russian avant-garde artists. Their works are his legacy – without him, they would not have survived the political upheavals in Russia.

Before We Go

Brussels, La Monnaie Opera House. Three people near the end of their lives meet with choreographers, actors and musicians. They take part in a unique experience which involves music, dance and silence. Their journey becomes a tribute to the fragility of the human condition, between reality and representation, tragedy of the body and freedom of the spirit. Together they question their own relationship with death.

Bezoek aan Picasso

In this short 20 minute black and white Belgian documentary, the director, Paul Haesaerts, visualised Pablo Picasso’s flow of imagination when the Spanish painter drew on large glass plates in front of the camera – like a live show of a greatest artist in performing a few masterstrokes that outlines a dove, bull, flower, man or woman and whatnot. (This technique of filming his painting from the other side of the glass plates precedes The Mystery of Picasso (1956), another famous documentary film on Picasso). (via http://www.kubrickians.com/2012/07/08/visite-picasso-1949-paul-haesaert/)