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- Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. The dancer is used as a medium to his or her inner life, but not for the portrayal of day to day existence. A Dionysian dance of nudity, eroticism, and sexuality, Butoh's scale of expression ranges from meditative tenderness to excessive grotesqueness. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society. An alliance of tradition and rebellion, Butoh is one of the most fascinating underground dance movements. "Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies.
- A fast moving odyssey into the subterranean world of the rarely explored province of Filipino genre filmmaking.
- Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.
- Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, roots himself in cultural visions of space, landscape, and juxtaposition. Inspired deeply by his home and heritage, Ando proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. Believing in the importance of carpentry and craftsmanship, Ando pays tribute to his culture and the way in which architecture is approached through the body. Showcasing his individuality through urban complexes, residences and chapels, Ando presents the work of his formative years, before embarking on projects in Europe and the United States.
- By the end of the 1980's a new architectural sensibility challenged the prevailing post-Modern attitude and brought forth new and daring designs. Driven by the philosophy and theory of Jacques Derrida, the architects of Deconstructivism are rooted in a movement that urges us to examine the space we move through. Deconstructivist Architects documents explosive and seemingly chaotic structures from Vienna to L.A., and interviews those who pursue its aesthetic issues. Filmed on location with the architects and at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, which was curated by Philip Johnson.
- A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Sphere Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat genius.
- Architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden where he can keep the politics of architecture at a comfortable distance as he enjoys status and praise for his unique modernist buildings. In "The Practice of Architecture", critic Kenneth Frampton visits Zumthor at his studio where the two are surrounded by models, designs and plans for current and future projects throughout Europe and the United States. Frampton questions the renowned architecture on the motives and methods behind some of his most famous works, including his Zinc-Mine-Museum in Norway and the highly acclaimed Therme Vals, a stunning hotel and spa built over the thermal springs in Graubünden. While walking us through his career, Zumthor discusses his penchant for minimalism, the importance of landscape, light and material, and the architectural theory behind his stunningly precise style.
- James Stirling takes us from Germany, to London, to Boston, guiding us through three of his widely famed museums. Though the buildings designed and created by the established architect contain some of the world's most notable works of art, Stirling reminds us that architecture serves as its very own long standing piece. Influenced greatly by both the European avant-garde and classic Victorian structures, Stirling is bold and daring in his designs. Both his colleagues and critics reject the classification of Stirling as a Postmodernist, believing the term "rogue architect" to fit him better. In reference to his design process Stirling states, "I do not believe that no matter how complex a building is, it should be consistent in its expression, consistent in its scale, consistent in its materials. I think the building can be inconsistent in its materials, varied in its scale, and different in its expression." (James Stirling) With no desire to abide by the rules of a specific and timely movement, Stirling creates with a free and explorative hand.
- A look at the life, work, and impact of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), pop icon and artist, from his childhood in Pittsburgh to his death after a botched surgery. Warhol coined the word "superstar," became one, and changed the way the culture looks at and understands celebrity. After studying at Carnegie Tech, he goes to New York to be a commercial artist. By 1960, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist are inventing pop art. Warhol starts "The Factory," his workshop where he paints and makes movies. His is a cafe society of late nights and parties. His family, friends, an agent, a curator, gallery owners, actors, the co-founder of "Interview," and others tell stories and assess his art.
- The band of American artists known as the New York School toyed with tradition and rebelled against the Renaissance. In the early throes of Abstract Expressionism artists such as Jack Tworkov and Robert Motherwell were intent on working from the unconscious, eager to stray from the structured composition of the European work they had studied throughout school. Feeling as though free association yielded their best results, the painters, poets and performers of the New York School took a surrealist approach that was concerned less with aesthetic and more with expression. Those associated with the School were unified by their desire to create from within. While walking through the studios of Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, and Lee Krasner, writer and narrator Barbara Rose notes, "Many were immigrants to America, but slowly they turned their eyes from Europe, looking into themselves and into their own subjective conflicts and experiences. As a result, they created a monumental, dramatic art that remains a singular expression of the crucial modern quest for individuality and personal freedom." Never knowing exactly how their pieces would turn out, the artists of the New York School embraced their own complex humanity and worked from a place of bold, sporadic realness.
- Driven by their mutual admiration of classical architecture, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown have worked together to create a space of unique post-Modernist construction. Filmed during the design and realization of the Sainsbury extension to the National Gallery in London, the husband and wife team discuss their past work and the shared principles that led to their precise, historically inspired approach to modern architecture.
- While visiting four architectural practices in 1982, we discuss the postmodernist movement through its meaning and motives. Beyond Utopia: Changing Attitudes in American Architecture features Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, all of whom are protégés of Philip Johnson. Guided by their mentor, these innovators rejected the European modernism of Mies and Corbusier in search of alternative directions. The architects show and discuss their buildings of the time both in their personal offices and on location.
- Pop culture and modern media flooded the art world throughout the 1960's, giving artists new means and methods for a cultural revolution. Leading the scene of experimental and avant garde art were innovators such as Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. American Art in the 1960's follows said artists and many others as they venture through the movements of pop art, abstract expressionism, collage, sculpture and Expressionistic Cubism. Their audience followed along loyally as the artists' dove into new imagery that held a mirror up to society and examined the roots of culture. Narrator and writer, Barbara Rose makes the insightful observation: "As art was integrated into American life, it became more difficult to shock the public. Serious, profound, frivolous, absurd and ultimately tragic, the contradictions and paradoxes of the Sixties were reflected in American art of that revolutionary decade." (Barbara Rose) With no fear of experimenting with new mediums, the artists discuss the inspiration behind their work and the desire they feel to create.
- Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.
- Reclaiming the Body: Feminist Art in America features a collection of passionate, determined artists who have taken creation, performance and visual storytelling into their own hands. Loosely based on the two-part BAD GIRLS exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, Reclaiming the Body goes beyond the scope of the exhibition to include other significant contributors to feminist art. From sculpture to photography, the featured work challenges society's notion of the female form, femininity and gender identity. The film spans three generations of artists, from Louise Bourgeois to Janine Antoni, in order to give an overview of the history of this important movement from the 1960s to the present day.
- Pairing his collection of figurative paintings with an astute conversation surrounding mortality and humanity, "Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact" offers personal insight into the mind of an artist. In an interview led by friend and art critic, David Sylvester, Bacon opens up about his work and the, often times, grotesque and macabre tone of his paintings. His representations of the human figure in portraits and triptychs link him, in his view, to the distorted realism of Van Gogh and Picasso. With his unique take on life and death, Bacon explains to us the dichotomy of his art through an unexpectedly optimistic thesis which he dubbed the "brutality of fact". As Bacon's striking art conveys, with the acceptance of death comes a passionate vitality for life.
- Philip Guston is a powerful staple of the abstract expressionist movement, though he would prefer it be referred to as the New York School. Along with composers, choreographers and his fellow visual artists, Guston found his place in the avant garde. Often times finding modern art almost too accessible, Guston strives to create pieces that encourage audiences to engage, but not without deep consideration. His paintings rely heavily on motif and repetition, emphasizing the importance of his often political subjects. Perhaps his own worst critic, Guston had a habit of destroying the work he did not find himself connecting with. Guston had no interest in simply presenting an image that he was not fully absorbed in. His passion for his work comes through in heavy brush strokes which turn and travel expressively across the canvas. In reference to his own process and the diversity within his work Guston tell us "Nothing is ever solved in painting. It's a continuous chain that sometimes doesn't go in one line, but goes in a serpentine line or in crooked paths, detours, which have to be investigated." (Philip Guston) In both his paintings and career Guston did not fear exploration but welcomed it, eagerly following the winding path of his ever evolving art.
- A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.
- This installment of The New Modernists looks at nine American-based innovators and their work for housing projects, commercial architecture, private houses and renovations from California to Italy to Japan and beyond. New York architect Billie Tsien, who participates in the film along with her husband and creative partner Tod Williams, states "Making architecture is about the process of making something and the thing, when you are finished, is never perfect, it is always slightly changing, it gets the scratches of the people who move in, fingerprints, it is like life itself, it is not static." (Billie Tsien) The featured architects discuss their methods and efforts towards building on the principles of Modernism while evolving a new language- one drawn from politics, film, literature, theory and the state of the world.
- The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation with Matthew Barney follows the artist and New York Times art critic, Michael Kimmelman as they discuss his mythic display at the Guggenheim Museum. While guiding the camera through his sculptures and films, Barney tells Kimmelman about his process, vision and intentions when creating the "Cremaster Cycle". The sculptures, constructed from the artist's signature materials, including plastic, metal, and Vaseline, are three-dimensional incarnations of characters and settings seen in Barney's films. They exist independently but embody the same content, now expressed in space rather than time.
- As Isamu Noguchi walks us through his grand sculptures and gardens, the artist offers a unique insight into the way we, as individuals and as a collective society exist in time. Guided by his fascination with one's own reaction to time, Noguchi works to create pieces that emulate the non-linear narrative of life. Convinced that trapping oneself in a single time can be isolating in both existence and art, Noguchi stated, "If you are caught in time, immediate present time, then your choice is very limited, you can only do certain things correctly belonging to that time. But if you want to escape from that time constraint, than the whole world- I mean not just the most industrialized world - but the whole world is someplace where you belong." (Isamu Noguchi) Noguchi relates this interpretation of time to both his art and his experiences with the nature that tied into his work. While explaining how Michelangelo was told to collect his marble from Monte Altissimo di Nago, Noguchi dwells on the importance of recognizing the relationship between nature, art and technology. Much like his resistance to conform in the constructs of time, Noguchi is also persistent in his artistic freedom, rejecting the notion of a set genre or movement. He relies on intuition and passion to dictate his presence, and therefore his work's presence, in time and space. Reluctant to lock himself or his work into any preconceived notion, Noguchi stated the following, "I consider conceptual things as a base--that's where you start from. But the discovery is in the accidents and also the things that happen which make you change your mind. I'm never absolutely fixed about anything." (Isamu Noguchi) The fluidity of Noguchi's work led to a collection of stunning and diverse pieces that are, as he intended, timeless.
- 4 Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg acts as a collective portrait of creators linked only by their stated intention of expressing ideas through art. Unconnected to traditional concepts of beauty, storytelling or pictorial representation, the artists discuss the context of their art and how their work and the public's perception of it have changed over time. This film offers the rare opportunity to see a large body of work in their studios.
- In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York, Atlanta, and in various European cities. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. The group was joined on the European tour by Ray Copeland, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and Johnny Griffin, traveling as part of George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival road company.
- Greg Lynn, one of the leading figures in computer-aided architectural design, visits the first in a series of exhibitions initiated by the Canadian Centre for Architecture for which he is the curator. The exhibitions, which will travel to the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, are meant to explore the role of digital technologies in the design process since its beginnings. The first exhibition, entitled "Archaeology of the Digital", features four individuals who are pioneers in applying new technologies to architectural design: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Chuck Hoberman, and Shoei Yoh. At the exhibition Lynn is joined by three of the four practitioners: Eisenman, Gehry and Hoberman, who each explain their path to the digital at the time.
- No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.