How to Get a Head in Sculpture

The Sculpture 100

The Sculpture 100 is a journey through one hundred public sculptures made across one hundred years. In 1905, Thomas Brock and Aston Webb began work on their final grand celebration of Victoria Regina, the Victoria Memorial, at one end of London's Mall. A century later, Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant sits triumphant on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. This is a film about these, and ninety-eight other distinctive, significant, quirky, glorious public sculptures made for England in the century in between.

High Maintenance

A fascinating journey through the life of Israeli artist Dani Karavan, an irreverent and charismatic creator, recognized worldwide for radically transforming public space with his monumental environmental installations.

Whispers / Megan Cope

A documentary short which follows follow Quandamooka artist Megan Cope in the creation of her work 'Whispers' and the lead up to the opening of the exhibition at Sydney Opera House in 2023.

Sculptures for a Windless Space

A short film with shots of sculptures by Anneke Walvoort. The materiality of film plays an important role: visible grain, flashes of colour, unexpected camera movements.

The Studio of Sofía Fernández Díaz

México-raised and currently Chicago-based artist Sofía Fernández Díaz details her process of adorning found objects and handmade textiles with beads, dyes, and melted wax to imbue them with new meaning, and to give them patitas.

One path one collection | Agueda Lozano

The sculptor and painter Agueda Lozano narrates the first contacts with plastic art that she had in her native Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua; her stay in France and how was her arrival in Europe; her return to Mexico, and her participation in important exhibitions and sculpture projects, among which the definitive insertion sculpture that she inaugurated in the Plaza de México in Paris stands out. Likewise, she talks about her works in the Payment in Kind Collection, about the characters that promoted and inspired her in her career, and about her aesthetic proposals and creation techniques.

Seedbed

“In this legendary sculpture/performance Acconci lay beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, "You're pushing your cunt down on my mouth" or "You're ramming your cock down into my ass." Not only does the architectural intervention presage much of his subsequent work, but all of Acconci's fixations converge in this, the spiritual sphincter of his art. In Seedbed Acconci is the producer and the receiver of the work's pleasure. He is simultaneously public and private, making marks yet leaving little behind, and demonstrating ultra-awareness of his viewer while being in a semi-trance state.” – Jerry Saltz (via: http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_seedbed.html)

Vlavianos: Impulse and Reason

The documentary follows Nicolas Vlavianos (1929-2022), a renowned sculptor, in the final years of his life. It captures the moment — when he is around 90 years old — that he returns to an old drawer, tries to pick up his tools, and realizes he no longer has the strength to hold them. That simple gesture becomes the symbolic trigger: the end of his long creative cycle and the beginning of a farewell to his art. From there, the film documents the dismantling of Vlavianos’s studio and workspace, and the gradual process of his withdrawal from physical creation. It’s not just a retrospective of works: it’s a portrait of decline, memory, mortality, and legacy.

Sarcophagus for a Queen

Bjørn Nørgaard and a team of Czech glass artists in the demanding process of creating a grave monument for Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark.

Odvaha

Traces: The Kabul Museum 1988

The Kabul National Museum, once known as the "face of Afghanistan," was destroyed in 1993. We filmed the most important cultural treasures of the still-intact museum in 1988: ancient Greco-Roman art and antiquitied of Hellenistic civilization, as well as Buddhist sculpture that was said to have mythology--the art of Gandhara, Bamiyan, and Shotorak among them. After the fall of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992, some seventy percent of the contents of the museum was destroyed, stolen, or smuggled overseas to Japan and other countries. The movement to return these items is also touched upon. The footage in this video represents that only film documentation of the Kabul Museum ever made.

Drei Frauen

Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali

A documentary about surrealist artist Salvador Dali, narrated by Orson Welles.

James Bearden: Man of Metals

An essay style film in the vein of Orson Welles' "F For Fake" and Jon Jost's "Speaking Directly". From 2011 to 2013, filmmaker Kristian Day randomly documented the art and actions of the award winning metal sculptor, James Bearden. Refusing to make another artist documentary, Day insisted on illustrating Bearden's creative process through surreal and id oriented story telling.

The Piccirilli Factor

The Piccirilli family settled in New York City and started the largest and most prolific marble carving studio in America. For nearly 50 years, Piccirilli sculptors helped shape the architectural landscapes of Washington and New York through hundreds of monuments, memorials, and artworks, many of which are preserved in museums and private collections.

Sculpter la mémoire

13 figures de Sarah Beauchesne au 71, rue Blanche

Giacometti

The Arts Council commissioned this film to coincide with their major retrospective of Giacometti's work at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in the summer of 1965. A similar exhibition was held concurrently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sealing the artist's reputation as a modern master.

Sand Men

Neculai, Aurel and Raj all left their homes in Romania for the same reason - to seek a better life for their family. Now, in Britain, with their loved ones depending on them, they survive by creating sand sculptures on London’s streets.

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405

56-year-old artist Mindy Alper has suffered severe depression and anxiety for most of her life. For a time she even lost the power of speech, and it was during this period that her drawings became extraordinarily articulate.