The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.
A montage, using documentary material filmed during the war, shows the beginnings of an air attack and Londoners entering shelters. From the silent deserted streets, the film moves underground into the world of Henry Moore's shelter drawings. People sit along subway platforms, looking after their children, settling down for the night, sleeping in bunks and on the floor. Above ground London burns. Henry Moore used the eye of a sculptor in portraying the stolidity and enduring patience of a besieged people. This film brings together a unique series of drawings which are some of the most remarkable achievements of an artist during wartime. Eliminating all narration, it explores, on several metaphoric levels, the very nature of human consciousness and creativity.
The inner world of the great painter Max Ernst is the subject of this film. One of the principal founders of Surrealism, Max Ernst explores the nature of materials and the emotional significance of shapes to combine with his collages and netherworld canvases. The director and Ernst together use the film creatively as a medium to explain the artist's own development.
For the whole of his long life Emil Nolde, the leading German Expressionist, luxuriated in colour. Before the First World War in Berlin he made many paintings of the theater, music-hall and opera; he loved flowers and even coaxed a garden out of the salty soil of the Baltic coast, where he had built himself an isolated house. His parents were Frisian peasants and he loved the landscape of North Friesland: it was the theme of many of his pictures. But the Nazis disapproved of his work and finally forbade him to paint at all. Although Nolde was already in his seventies when this happened, no political regime could stifle his vision. At great danger to himself he continued to work, making watercolour sketches the size of postcards, which he called 'unpainted pictures,' meaning them to serve as sketches for the large oils he would paint when he was free. And he did outlive the Nazi regime, marrying a twenty-eight-year-old woman in 1948 and painting up until the year before he died.
This movement marks the beginning of modern art in Germany. It is the German equivalent of French Fauvism, from which it draws its main inspiration, but it carries an Expressionist and social emphasis that is characteristic of Nordic 'angst.' The artists of Die Brucke were restless creatures, over-sensitive, haunted by religious, sexual, political or moral obsessions. Dramatic landscapes and nudes, mystical and visionary compositions, scenes of the countryside, the streets, the circus, the cafe-dansants and the demi-monde were their principal subjects. Their pure colours blaze in acid stridency, encompassed by rough, dry contours which show the influence of African art and primitive woodcuts. The work of the following is shown: Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Muller, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein.
Animated short film of Michelangelo set to Beethoven Symphony No. 5 - I. Allegro con brio.
Queen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time.
Az ifjú Sabine Párizsban tanul, s közben szülővárosában, Le Mans-ban elárusítónő. Elhatározza, hogy szakít nős szeretőjével, és házasságban próbál boldogságot találni. A "jó házassághoz" azonban egyelőre hiányzik a jelölt. Sabine kétségek közt igyekszik tervét megvalósítani.
Nicholas Baum goes on a journey to Den Bosch, Hieronymus Bosch's town, and gives his explanation about what he thinks the painter's works originally meant.
Mircea Eliade was a traditionalist Romanian novelist and philosopher. Following the disaster of the Second World War, he moved to Paris and Chicago, becoming a respected and influential historian of religions. He acquired something of the status of a guru, as poignantly told in the 1987 documentary Mircea Eliade et la redécouverte du sacré. The film features interviews with Eliade at the end of his life, artfully spliced with cuts to religious imagery on a background of moving spiritual music. It was released in 1987, the year after his death.
An artistic animated short showing the life in secondary school.
This made-for-TV documentary introduces the layperson to concepts and technologies that were emerging in computer interface design in the late 1980s and early 1990s: hypertext, multimedia, virtual assistants, interactive video, 3D animation, and virtual reality.
Michael Palin travels to France in search of the Mediterranean view on his wall, captured by his favourite artist, Scottish painter Anne Redpath. He travels from a London bank, via a chateau in Cap Ferrat and a monastery in Edinburgh.
Katherine Watson 1953 végén Kaliforniából New Englandbe utazik, hogy művészettörténetet tanítson a Wellesley College leányiskolában. Abban a hiszemben lát neki a feladatnak, hogy tanítványai, akik az állam legjobb és legtehetségesebb diákjai, élni fognak az előttük felvillanó lehetőségekkel. Ám hamarosan rá kell jönnie, hogy a tekintélyes intézményben nagyon is konzervatív légkör uralkodik. A lányok stílus- és etikett tanára, Nancy Abbey széles körben osztott nézetei szerint egy fiatal lány számára sokkal értékesebb egy eljegyzési gyűrű, mint a tudományos műveltség. Amikor Katherine önálló gondolkodásra bátorítja a tanítványait, összeütközésbe kerül a tanári kar és a diákok konzervatívabb tagjaival, akik közül legelszántabb ellenfele egyik saját tanítványa lesz, az arisztokrata származású Betty Warren.
M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?
A short film by Peter Greenaway. It depicts the painting The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese, through mixed media and shows different perspectives.
We go behind the scenes and into the minds of artists as they capture, commemorate, and, at times, condemn our presidents.
A mystical detective story set in the realm of Moscow art scene. Psychedelic trip through different places, characters and strategies in the search for the Author, covering mythology of Moscow art from the period of 1980-2010. The movie is based on the 'Inspection Medical Hermeneutics' group's text of the same name and on the historical research performed by the authors of the film. Production was an experiment in collective film making experience.