The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. In these postmodern days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid. Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.
The tumultuous history of the Louvre Museum, founded in 1793, and its fabulous art collections, an immortal testimony to the destiny of France and all of Europe.
Two fragments of 8mm home-movie footage shot by the artist near Berlin weave together in repeating cycles of action, temporal manipulation, and colour distortion, heightening the viewer’s awareness of film-time and the film-image, and perception of colour in motion.
'Kiki de Montparnasse' was the unwary muse of major avant-garde painters of the early twentieth century. Memorable witness of a flamboyant Montparnasse, she emancipated from her status as a simple model and became a Queen of the Night, a painter, a press cartoonist, a writer and a cabaret singer.
Having previously investigated the architecture of Hitler and Stalin's regimes, Jonathan Meades turns his attention to another notorious 20th-century European dictator, Mussolini. His travels take him to Rome, Milan, Genoa, the new town of Sabaudia and the vast military memorials of Redipuglia and Monte Grappa. When it comes to the buildings of the fascist era, Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, with Mussolini caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome. The result was a variety of styles that still influence architecture today. Along the way, Meades ponders on the nature of fascism, the influence of the Futurists, and Mussolini's love of a fancy uniform.
A Baltimore teenager who picks up a second-hand camera starts snapping his way to stardom, soon turning into a nationwide sensation, with a fateful choice between his life and his art.
Bauta is a short documentary that explores public, monumental buildings in Norway - stone and concrete buildings. By the public they have the desire to be torn down, or are not given particular aesthetic value. But what about when people are out of the buildings and they get to stand for themselves? Bauta provides a new experience of space and architecture.
Hired to steal a rare painting from one of the most enigmatic painters of all time, an ambitious art dealer becomes consumed by his own greed and insecurity as the operation spins out of control.
After a long absence an artist returns to her gentrified community where she explores her social position and complicity in the rapid changes.
When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office vixen Fiona struggles with her banana phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short film pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. This work uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.
A visual journey through Norwegian modernist church architecture. A short documentary film that pays tribute to the Norwegian church and post-war postmodernist architects for its daring reform of the 50-70's innovative church building. Raw concrete and cold clean lines in a functionalist style were in line with society's development, but in stark contrast to what the church had previously represented. The film portrays 25 of these churches from all over the country
During Italian renaissance, young painter Raffaello Sanzio falls in love with Margherita, a maiden of the people, becomes her lover and lives with her. But this relationship arouses the jealousy of a beautiful aristocrat who secretly orders the kidnapping of the girl. Raffaello falls into a state of prostration and does everything he can to find Margherita...
The sun is always changing and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on February 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.
In the center of Equator Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ilima community remains one of the most isolated in the world. They have coexisted with endangered wildlife in their surrounding forest for generations, but as the pace of development has increased, this fragile ecosystem has suffered. They partnered with the African Wildlife Foundation and our architecture firm, MASS Design Group, in 2012 to create a new conservation focused primary school and community center. This film documents our collective building process - one aimed at leveraging local craft and ecological knowledge towards education, preservation, and beauty.
Georgia O'Keeffe appears on camera for the first time to talk candidly about her work and her life in this 1977 documentary.
How did ancient Egyptians build the Great Pyramid at Giza, joining two million blocks of heavy stone with amazing precision? Who were the leaders who built these enormous structures, and what did these tombs signify? Host David Macaulay explores the history, mythology, and religions of Egypt's people, combining live footage and animation. Take a rare look at the mummy of Ramses II and buried treasure in the sacred Valley of the Kings.
Bolero is played every 15 minutes in the world. This film tries to answer how this famous melody inspired and influenced the world pop-culture? It explores the complexity and the richness of a piece so simple in appearance: the emotions it triggers, vertigo it creates, the words it inspires.
A film in three movements. In the first one, we find a historical synthesis of Brazilian architecture, from the slaves' dwellings to the Ministry of Education Building. In the second segment, architects such as Burle Marx, Lina Bo Bardi, Grigori Warchavchik and Joaquim Cardoso talk about architecture's social function. In the third movement, inhabitants of some Brazilian cities discuss the space they live in.
Arturo Urbiola, independent singer/songwriter, talks about the influence music has had on his life, it's impact, and what's in store for his artistic career after becoming a father.