James Tissot: L'étoffe d'un peintre

Dreams Are Colder Than Death

2014

What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.

Graffiti Wars

2011

A look at the feud between graffiti artists King Robbo and Banksy.

Crumb

1994

This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin', Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, ex-wife and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind.

Rubens

1948

This surreal abstract film falls into three sections, or movements, the first taking place on the ground, the second in the air and the third again on the ground. In the first movement various motifs or themes are introduced, which are again picked up and developed in the third movement. Six spheres, evolved in the first movement, become the sole subject matter–or “dancers”–of the second movement, which consists of a simple type of ballet using the floor-plan choreography or traditional ballet as a basis of interest.

Cern and the Sense of Beauty

2017

An exploration of the link between science and beauty through the work of scientists at CERN, in Geneva.

Statues Also Die

1953

Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.

Phantasia

2024

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

Exergo

2024

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.

Not Withholding Anything from You

2024

How do artists view their own work? How does actor Esko Salminen immerse himself in his roles, how does the writer/director Saara Turunen create a whole new world for the stage, and why does musician PK Keränen pick up his guitar time and time again? Is creativity a conscious or subconscious process, a pleasure or a compulsion? Veikko Aaltonen’s documentary takes us straight into the heart of creativity with artists from different fields and generations. Celebrating the various forms of passion and creative work, the film presents a compelling case for the significance of art.

Sk8face

2024

Tells the history of skateboard art and its evolution through the decades, as iconic and rebellious skateboarders and artists give firsthand experiences and stories about their art that challenged the establishment.

Spiegelbeeld

2025

Tilburg artist Tommy van der Loo searches for the influence of superiority thinking, racism and colour in his life. Van der Loo is an emerging artist and his work has been purchased by Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He also had an exhibition at the Kunsthal. He also made the memorial for the abolition of slavery in Eindhoven. He has had multiple experiences with discrimination and incorporates that into his sculptures. Identity and image formation are important to him: How do you look at others, how do others look at you. The search is the inspiration for his new sculpture.

Ich. Immendorff

2007

Documentary film about the painter and sculptor Jörg Immendorff who ranks among the most important German artists. The filmmakers accompanied Immendorff over a period of two years – until his death in May 2007. The artist had been living for nine years knowing that he was terminally ill with ALS. The film shows how Immendorff continued to work with unabated energy and how he tried not to let himself be restrained by his deteriorating health.

Constable: A Country Rebel

2014

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

Josef Mánes II.

1952

Bomb It

2007

Through interviews and guerilla footage of graffiti writers in action on five continents, the documentary tells the story of graffiti from its origins in prehistoric cave paintings thru its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70’s and 80’s, then follows the flames as they paint the globe.