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Art and Artist

GUSTAV STICKLEY: AMERICAN CRAFTSMAN

Director: Herb Stratford

The rise, fall and resurrection of the father of the American Arts and Crafts movement is chronicled in the new documentary Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman.

The film offers an unprecedented look at the life and works of Gustav Stickley as told through interviews, archival materials, and a close examination of his most iconic works. It traces the development and evolution of Stickley's unique style, as well as the creation of his diverse businesses including the Craftsman Magazine, Craftsman Farms and his ground-breaking Manhattan store. It also details the eventual loss of his businesses - and, after several decades, the rebirth and recognition of the movement he inspired.

The film visits several key locations in his lifetime, including his Syracuse home, where he lived and created his first arts and crafts interior, and the pump house at Skaneateles Lake in upstate New York, which he restored as a summer family camp; as well we meet some of the talented collaborators Stickley surrounding himself with, such as Harvey Ellis, Lamont Warner and Irene Sargent.

DVD / 2021 / 68 minutes

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GLOW: A WILD RIDE TO HEAVEN

Director: Gabriel Baur

"Someone who glows so brightly is not going to grow old," Fellini once prophesied about Irene Staub, aka Lady Shiva, one of the greatest of all Swiss divas. Thanks to her aura and talent, many doors opened for Irene during Zurich's exuberant years between 1968 and the late 1980s. Discovered by a pioneer of Swiss fashion design, she made the break from streetwalking to being part of the fashionable art scene. Finding work as a model, she also pursued her dream of becoming a singer, starting out in a legendary Zurich underground band. But Lady Shiva lived life in the fast lane; torn between the stress and strain of success, a yearning for freedom, and self-destructive urges, she died far too young under circumstances that have never been fully explained.

Using never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with prominent contemporaries, director Gabriel Baur brings us back to a vibrant age of boundless possibilities, in which the sky seemed the only limit for people like Lady Shiva... age that to this day still kindles a yearning in us.

DVD (German with English Subtitles) / 2020 / 100 minutes

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MYTH OF A COLORBLIND FRANCE

Director: Alan Govenar

For more than a century, Black artists, authors, musicians and others have traveled to Paris to liberate themselves from the racism of the United States. What made these artistic innovators choose France? Why were the French fascinated by the newcomers? And to what extent was and is France truly colorblind?

Myth of a Colorblind France investigates these questions and examines the ways that racism has plagued not only Blacks fleeing the United States, but Africans and people of color in France today. The film explores the lives and careers of renowned African Americans who emigrated to Paris, including Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Beauford Delaney, Augusta Savage, and Lois Mailou Jones, and includes rare home movie footage of Henry Ossawa Tanner in Paris.

Myth of a Colorblind France features interviews with French scholars Michel Fabre and Francis Hofstein, as well as sculptor and author Barbara Chase-Riboud, poet James Emanuel, historian Tyler Stovall, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris, graffiti artist Quik, hip hop producer Ben the Glorious Bastard, African drummer Karim Toure, and many more.

DVD (English and French, With English Subtitles) / 2020 / 86 minutes

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AI WEIWEI: YOURS TRULY

Director: Cheryl Haines

In the 1950s, Ai Weiwei's father, a dissident poet, received an anonymous postcard while in exile. This one small act of humanity had a profoundly moving and transformational impact on both father and son. In Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, Weiwei elaborates on this meaningful event, revealing candid details about his childhood, including years of privation on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The years in the Gobi, along with Weiwei's 2011 detention by Chinese authorities, became the inspiration for his revolutionary exhibition @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz, a monumental presentation of new artworks addressing the struggle for fundamental human rights.

In @Large, Weiwei - though still prevented from traveling abroad - transformed Alcatraz, America's most notorious prison, into a powerful expression of socially engaged art, including portraits made from LEGO bricks of prisoners of conscience from around the world. Throughout the film, we discover how personal these issues of injustice and incarceration are for Ai Weiwei and the extent to which he wove his family's experiences into the exhibition.

For the final piece of the exhibition, Weiwei, inspired by his father's story, invited visitors to write messages of hope to imprisoned activists using postcards imprinted with the national birds and flowers of the countries where the prisoners were being held. The project was named Yours Truly and by the time the exhibition ended, over 90,000 postcards had been sent across the globe. Then something even more astonishing happened: prisoners and their families began writing back!

Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly follows these postcards around the globe, from Alcatraz to Bahrain, Washington D.C., Cairo and beyond, as former prisoners of conscience - and the families of those still detained - reveal the comfort they found in messages from people they would never meet.

DVD (English, Mandarin and Arabic, With English Subtitles) / 2019 / 78 minutes

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LEMEBEL

By Joanna Reposi Garibaldi

"I don't turn the other cheek. I turn my ass, comrade." - Pedro Lemebel

Chilean performance artist, writer, anti-fascist, cross-dresser, and queer activist Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) was a larger-than-life icon of his country's gay liberation movement. In both his work and his life, he blended humor with spectacle, working for a new and expansive view of sexuality rooted in solidarity with all marginalized groups.

In his youth, Lemebel was part of a performance art duo called Mares of the Apocalypse. In one particularly provocative piece, he marches in the New York Pride parade wearing a halo of syringes filled with red liquid, evoking blood. Lemebel also has an affinity for fire-covering himself in accelerant and setting it alight, and, in one of his last performances, wrapping himself in a duffel bag and rolling down blazing steps shortly after a chemotherapy session.

Director Joanna Reposi Garibaldi, a friend of Lemebel's, gathers archival footage, images, and slides from Lemebel's personal collection. We see some of these dramatically projected onto monumental buildings as well as more modest settings, like the balcony of Lemebel's childhood apartment. At his own urging, she continues to film him during his last weeks, before his death from throat cancer.

LEMEBEL is an artistic biography of a brilliant and provocative man, and an intimate portrait of an artist at the end of his days, making sense of it all.

DVD (Spanish, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2019 / 96 minutes

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PARIS CALLIGRAMMES

By Ulrike Ottinger

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES is German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger's love letter to the city where she came of age, and her explorations of her own artistic growth, fueled by bookstores, jazz clubs, workshops and cafes.

"Calligramme" is the term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire for his poems featuring stunning visual typography. Like a series of calligrammes, this film is divided individual poetic segments, covering the period from Ottinger's arrival in Paris in 1962 to her return to Germany seven years later.

In the tradition of flanerie, Ottinger writes in her director's statement, she takes us through the city, turning her lens on decisive personal and political focal points. They include her time at a legendary bookstore, the studio where she learned the art of etching, her embrace of the French New Wave through the Cinematheque Francaise, and the cafes and streets where personal artistic ferment bled into political action against the war in Algeria-and, ultimately, to the protests of May 1968.

Ottinger begins with archival footage re-creating the night she arrived in Paris-picked up by five men who looked like they'd stepped out of a film noir. Although PARIS CALLIGRAMMES was filmed nearly 60 years after the events of that night, Ottinger captures the sense of wonder and belonging she found as a young artist in Paris. She revisits her influences and admits to her failings-like an inability to fully understand the role of colonialism.

Appearing herself only occasionally in archival photos, Ottinger creates a personal film that connects her own artistic awakening to the broader social issues of the day. Combining contemporary and archival footage, she evokes the past without succumbing to nostalgia.

DVD (German; English; French With English Subtitles, Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 131 minute

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SEAT 20D

Director: Jill Campbell

Suse Lowenstein lost her son Alex in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In an effort to come to terms with her grief, Suse turned to her art. She began to sculpt herself naked, frozen in the position she fell into upon hearing the news of her son's death. Creating the sculpture brought her solace, and when Suse posted about her project in the Pan Am Victims' Family Newsletter, inviting others to participate, 75 women responded.

Suse spent fifteen years completing the monumental sculpture she titled "Dark Elegy," a memorial to the victims of the brutal attack that altered American history. In her new documentary Seat 20D, director Jill Campbell explores how art cradled a mother's soul and touches all who view it.

DVD / 2019 / 70 minutes

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TATTOO UPRISING

Director: Alan Govenar

From antiquity to the present, Tattoo Uprising reveals the artistic and historical roots of today's tattoo explosion. This sweeping overview explores Biblical references and early Christian practices before moving on to the voyages of Captain James Cook and finally to our modern day, ever-evolving use of the tattoo in the Western world.

Alan Govenar began work on this film in 1980 while finishing his infamous short documentary Stoney Knows How. Tattoo Uprising features some of the most extraordinary people of the tattoo world including Ed Hardy, Stoney St. Clair, Cynthia Witkin, Calamity Jane, Anne de Hey! And more, as well as an unforgettable appearance by filmmaker Werner Herzog, who allows a rare glimpse at his Ed Hardy tattoo. The film was shot in part by the late legendary filmmaker Les Blank, who also appears on camera.

DVD / 2019 / 77 minutes

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URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD: INTO HER OWN

By Daniel Traub

"I have been able to manipulate cedar in ways that are almost outrageous." - Ursula von Rydingsvard

The sculptures are massive, yet strangely intimate. Some feel imbued with an almost primal energy: a series of installations reminiscent of wings in New York's Battery Park, a monumental yet inviting piece outside Brooklyn's Barclays Center, the stunning "Scientia" which evokes the power of nature and the firing of brain synapses.

URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD: INTO HER OWN is an artistic biography of one of the few women in the world working in monumental sculpture. Von Rydingsvard's work has been featured in the Venice Biennale and is held in the collections of some of the world's great museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. But she may be best-known for work in public spaces - imposing pieces painstakingly crafted (usually from cedar), with complex surfaces.

In this documentary, we go behind the scenes with von Rydingsvard, as she and her collaborators - cutters, metalsmiths, and others - produce new work, including challenging commissions in copper and bronze. But the film also delves into the artist's personal life, and how it has shaped her work. Born in Poland during the Second World War, she was partly raised in a displaced persons camp and came to the US as a refugee with her nine-person family. Her younger brother shares memories of being raised by their violent, domineering father - a man whose influence von Rydingsvard continues to feel. Brought up in a blue-collar environment, she became a teacher and then, as a single mother, moved to New York in the 1970s to take up her artistic practice full-time, while making ends meet by delivering meals. There was a flowering of high-profile female artists working in the city at the time - from Yoko Ono to Cindy Sherman - and von Rydingsvard finally felt at home.

In conversations with curators, patrons, family, and fellow artists, we come to know von Rydingsvard as a driven but compassionate sculptor with a deep commitment to her art and the world around her. Speaking with her husband, the late Nobel Prize-winning brain researcher Paul Greengard, von Rydingsvard talks about how both art and science pay homage to nature. Over images of organic-looking work installed outdoors, she says, "I read a lot of things from nature. Whether it's from animals, whether it's from plants, what the clouds do, what the skies do, she's my major teacher."

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 57 minutes

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CHASING PORTRAITS

Director: Elizabeth Rynecki

Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943) was a prolific Warsaw-based artist who painted scenes of the Polish-Jewish community until he was murdered at Majdanek. After the Holocaust, Moshe's wife was only able to recover a small fraction of his work, but unbeknownst to the family, many other pieces survived.

For more than a decade his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Rynecki, has searched for the missing art, with remarkable and unexpected success. Spanning three generations, Chasing Portraits is a deeply moving narrative of the richness of one man's art, the devastation of war, and one woman's unexpected path to healing.

DVD / 2018 / 78 minutes

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F11 AND BE THERE

Director: Jethro Waters

For 65 years and counting, Burk Uzzle has created some of the most iconic photographs in American history. From Martin Luther King Jr. to Woodstock to America's small towns and back roads, Uzzle's photographs have provided a breathtaking commentary on American civil rights, race, social justice, and art. Initially grounded in documentary photography when he was the youngest photographer hired by LIFE magazine at age 23, his work grew into a combination of split-second impressions reflecting the human condition during his tenure as a member of the international Magnum cooperative founded by one of his mentors, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

An electrifying fusion of music, image, and dialogue, "F11 and Be There" captures the life and artistry of Uzzle, including his current portrait work with the African American community in Eastern North Carolina.

DVD / 2018 / 84 minutes

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ETERNITY HAS NO DOOR OF ESCAPE: ENCOUNTERS WITH OUTSIDER ART

By Arthur Borgnis

"Outsider art" challenges established historical categories and transcends artistic movements. A translation of the French term art brut, a phrase coined by the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet in the aftermath of World War II, this label was applied to works produced by artists suffering from mental illness, practitioners of Spiritism, and self-taught visionaries. Their work compels viewers to question aesthetic and cultural norms, and the place attributed to those with disabilities in our society.

Drawing its title from a celebrated exhibition of the work of collectors Jean-David Mermod and Philippe Eternod at Switzerland's Gottardo Art Gallery, ETERNITY HAS NO DOOR OF ESCAPE traces the tumultuous history of art brut and introduces us to its pivotal figures, including psychiatrist and art collector Dr. Hans Prinzhorn; curator Harald Szeemann; and Surrealist artist and writer Andre Breton. Its expert interviewees adding context and background to the history of art brut include writers Deborah Couette, Laurent Danchin, Savine Faupin, Thomas Röske and Michel Thevoz; curators Lucienne Peiry and Carine Fol; artists Michel Nedjar; psychiatrists Beatrice Steiner and Andreas Altorfer and more.

Using a treasure trove of rare archival footage, much of it previously unseen, the film brings viewers to the places and institutions in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium where the history of "Outsider Art" unfolded and continues to unfold today.

DVD (French, German, With English Subtitles, Color, Black and White) / 2017 / 80 minutes

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EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY PEOPLE

Director: Alan Govenar

Extraordinary Ordinary People is a music-fueled journey through folk and traditional arts in America. At a time when the existence of the National Endowment for the Arts has never been more threatened, Alan Govenar's documentary focuses on one of its least known and most enduring programs: the National Heritage Fellowship, awarded annually since 1982.

Featuring a breathtaking array of men and women who have been awarded the fellowship, including musicians, dancers, quilters, woodcarvers and more, the film demonstrates the importance of the folk and traditional arts in shaping the fabric of America. From Bill Monroe and B.B. King to Passamaquoddy basket weavers and Peking Opera singers; from Appalachia and the mountains of New Mexico to the inner city neighborhoods of New York, the suburbs of Dallas, and the isolated Native American reservations of Northern California - each of the artists share exceptional talent, ingenuity, and perseverance.

DVD / 2017 / 84 minutes

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CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG, THE

By Michael Schindhelm

Art world sensation Ai Weiwei credits him with launching his international career. Renowned pianist Lang Lang describes him as a mentor to Chinese artists. Curator Victoria Lu believes that his taste and influence as a collector has been felt around the world.

But when Swiss businessman Uli Sigg first went to China, art was far from his mind. The year was 1979, and Sigg-working for the Schindler escalator and elevator company-was hoping to set up one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government, seeking international investment in the post-Mao era, and a Western company. At the time, even the fanciest hotels had rats, boardrooms were so poorly heated you could see your breath, and the government still regulated hairstyles (five different kinds of perm allowed).

Uli Sigg is not a man who does things by halves. "My ego, my way" says a t-shirt he wears at one point in the film. When he took up rowing, he went to the world championships. When he negotiated a joint venture, he wanted to create a model for future partnerships. And when he became interested in Chinese art, he built a world-class personal collection.

Sigg championed the artists he admired, working tirelessly for their international recognition and to preserve their artwork as a record of China's tumultuous and historic changes. Eventually, Sigg became the Swiss ambassador to China and a consultant on major Chinese art projects, including the construction of the Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.

THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG, directed by art historian and scholar Michael Schindhelm (Bird's Nest) and produced by Marcel Hoehn (Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World, The Knowledge ofo Healing, Monte Grande, Santiago Calatrava's Travels, The Written Face) is a history of China's recent opening to the West, and of the West's embrace of Chinese contemporary art, through the eyes of Sigg and the artists he championed. Artists including Ai Weiwei, Cao Chong'en, Cao Fei, Gang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Shao Fan, Wang Guangyi and Zeng Fanzhi are interviewed along with curators, diplomats, architects and business colleagues in this colorful documentary survey of contemporary Chinese art.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 93 minutes

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CHET ZAR: I LIKE TO PAINT MONSTERS

Director: Mike Correll

Enter the dark and foreboding world of Chet Zar, where apocalyptic industrial landscapes are inhabited by disturbing yet beautiful monstrosities. Sometimes gruesome, periodically funny, but always thought-provoking, Zar's art is as enigmatic as it is frightening. But who is Chet Zar, and why does he like to paint monsters? These are the questions at the heart of Chet Zar: I Like to Paint Monsters.

Zar is an influential figure in the Dark Art Movement, and, given his chosen moniker "Painter of Dark," this is no surprise. Born in 1967 in San Pedro, California, Zar was well known as the family prankster. With a passion for horror films, an innate urge to create bizarre artwork, and a superhuman work ethic, Zar seemed to be made for the special effects industry. During his time with the film industry, he designed and created creatures and make-up effects for such films as Darkman, The Ring, Hellboy I & II, and Planet of the Apes. Even more well-known is his work with the band Tool, contributing to both their music videos and their on-stage theatrical animations.

Despite his success in the film industry, Zar became disenchanted by the many artistic compromises required of him. With the support of his family and horror author Clive Barker, Zar decided in early 2000 to pursue his passion for monsters by painting them. In this new arena, he has flourished and found the much-needed freedom to explore his internal world and all of the oddities created by his brush strokes.

Chet Zar: I Like to Paint Monsters is your opportunity to take a journey into the mind and life of Zar. Become acquainted with his thoughts, motivations, and reflections of the past as well as his projections of the future. Delve into his experiences in the film industry, his transition from early special effects into the world of computer animation, and, ultimately, his evolution into the distinctive artist he is today.

This unique opportunity will allow you unprecedented access into the Dark Art movement, including the studios where it is being forged and the galleries where this cataclysmic work is being shown. Take part in this dynamic endeavor to explore the life and work of Chet Zar, "Painter of Dark"!

DVD / 2015 / 80 minutes

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TROUBLEMAKERS: THE STORY OF LAND ART

Director: James Crump

Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art unearths the history of land art in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s. The film features a cadre of renegade New York artists that sought to transcend the limitations of painting and sculpture by producing earthworks on a monumental scale in the desolate desert spaces of the American southwest. Today these works remain impressive not only for the sheer audacity of their makers but also for their out-sized ambitions to break free from traditional norms. The film casts these artists in a heroic light, which is exactly how they saw themselves. Iconoclasts who changed the landscape of art forever, these revolutionary, antagonistic creatives risked their careers on radical artistic change and experimentation, and took on the establishment to produce art on their own terms. The film includes rare footage and interviews which unveil the enigmatic lives and careers of storied artists Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), Walter De Maria (The Lightning Field) and Michael Heizer (Double Negative); a headstrong troika that established the genre. As the film makes clear, in making works that can never be possessed as an object in a gallery, these troublemakers stand in marked contrast to the hyper-speculative contemporary art world of today.

Troublemakers features Germano Celant, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Vito Acconci, Virginia Dwan, Charles Ross, Paula Cooper, Willoughby Sharp, Pamela Sharp, Lawrence Weiner, Nancy Holt, Carl Andre, Gianfranco Gorgoni, and Harald Szeemann.

DVD / 2015 / 72 minutes

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XU BING: PHOENIX

By Daniel Traub

"Drawing inspiration from the contemporary realities of his fast-changing country, Chinese artist Xu Bing spent two years creating his newest work, Phoenix. The installation features two monumental birds fabricated entirely from materials harvested from construction sites in urban China, including demolition debris, steel beams, tools, and remnants of the daily lives of migrant laborers. At once fierce and strangely beautiful, the mythic Phoenixes bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today's China." -MASS MoCA

The film Xu Bing: Phoenix documents the process of creating the work through to its installation at the Massachusetts' Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).

DVD (English, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2013 / 17 minutes

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