Vocation

How Much for Art?

Art, auctions, huge valuations of individual works, a market full of enigmas. The inaccessibility of the art world and its business mechanisms, incomprehensible to many, have always worked on the imagination. However, the incredible growth of interest in buying art in Poland over the past few means that the curtain of mysticism must be slowly falling. A look at the Polish art market, which with the political transformation has changed from a marginal and obscure curio to a modern, professional machine, opening for some artists of the youngest generation the gates of success inaccessible to their predecessors.

Charles Vandenhove, architecte de l'art

Billy Connolly: Portrait of a Lifetime

Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.

The Renaissance of Mata Ortiz

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.

The Black Contribution: Literature and Theatre

The Black Contribution – Literature and Theater 1978 is a rare documentary highlighting the voices and cultural impact of African American writers and performers during the civil rights era. Introduced by NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks and narrated by Roscoe Lee Brown, the film weaves together dramatic readings, theatrical excerpts, and candid urban street footage. Margaret Walker’s poem For My People is performed alongside scenes of daily Black life in New York City — children playing, families on stoops, open fire hydrants, and the realities of poverty in 1970s neighborhoods. James Baldwin appears in interview footage, while signs for his play The Amen Corner and stage excerpts from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun underscore the powerful presence of Black voices in American theater. With rare shots of Harlem life, literature, and performance, this film documents the enduring contributions of African American artists to U.S. culture and history.

與竹共舞

2012／HD／Color／19min／

Max Gimblett: Original Mind

Max Gimblett: Original Mind documents the life and process of eccentric, creative genius Max Gimblett. One of New Zealand’s most successful and internationally prominent living painters, Gimblett has been working in America since 1962. The filmmakers spent a week in Gimblett’s Soho loft where he and his devoted studio assistants generously revealed the techniques and philosophy behind his beautiful art.

Haruki Murakami: From Underground to 1Q84

Revealing the flaws of Japanese society, the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway prompted Murakami to return to his homeland, whose conformism he rejected, to examine it closely. This led to the creation of two works: Underground and 1Q84.

Inventory

A documentary by Olivier Gonard, shot partly in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, that examines Olivier Assayas' film Summer Hours, and its approach to art.

Where do they all go?

94-year old Esther, a pensioner with bad sight, is in search of her artist daugther’s public decoration. Endless phone conversations takes her through municipal bureaucracy and lost culture secretaries. Will she ever get an answer to the eternal question: Where does the art really go?

Hardwicke Circus: The Prison Gig

A short, low-budget documentary that follows a small jobbing band from the north of England called 'Hardwicke Circus' as they perform a gig and music workshop at 'Standford Hill HMP', a men's prison on the Isle of Sheppey in the south of England. Shot in Ben Archer's fly-on-the-wall 'gonzo' style of filmmaking and taken from the band's late-2019 tour of England's south coast, this documentary focuses on the joy of performance and music in an environment that does not often allow such expression. Bookended by short commentary from the band's lead singer Jonny Foster, 'Hardwicke Circus: The Prison Gig' is an uplifting ode to the power and necessity of art, even for those that society have deemed not to deserve it.

Survival in Berlin-Neukölln

About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.

Animation Film Making: A Teaching Method at the Institute of Design 1968 to 1980

A short video documentary on Larry Janiak's time as an instructor at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he taught undergraduate and graduate students for 12 years. Aaron Siskind hired Larry in 1968 to start an experimental live action and animated film area at the school. A narrator introduces Larry's career and achievements at the school and guides viewers through the animation filmmaking area. The film primarily features footage of a beginning animation course taught by Larry.

Recrear a Johannes Vermeer

Leonardo Da Vinci The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection

A portrait of the artist as a "sublime demon with the archangel's face", with an innovative musique concrète soundtrack.

Too Many Captain Cooks

For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, Captain James Cook is a figure of great historical significance.

Peter Monaghan: A Portrait

This documentary features a kinetic artist who creates vibrant mixed media works that push the boundary between 2D and 3D.

The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza: Writing for Emancipation

Between 1967 and 1976, Italian writer Goliarda Sapienza (1924-76) wrote The Art of Joy, a subversive novel about the dazzling social ascent of a rebellious heroine; too scandalous to be published at that contradictory time.

Still Life

This film explores the transformation of an image from color negative to color positive on one film stock. “The Still Life“ was painted its color negative during the filming and then the exposed film was processed and printed on color negative printstock.

Milan Kundera: From the Joke to Insignificance

The brilliant Czech writer Milan Kundera has not given an interview in thirty years; nor does he appear in public. How did he become a legendary author? What is so unique about his books?