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Art and Artist

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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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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GRAY MATTERS

Director: Marco Orsini

The documentary Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture.

Making a reputation with her lacquer work in the beginning of the 20th century, Gray became a critically acclaimed and sought-after decorator and designer before reinventing herself as an architect. Her first and most famous building, a modernist villa on the French Riviera called E-1027, was for many years mistakenly credited to her mentor, Le Corbusier. For the most part, her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98 years old) to be rediscovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested, and compelling.

DVD / 2014 / 76 minutes

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HANS RICHTER: EVERYTHING TURNS - EVERYTHING REVOLVES

Director: Dave Davidson

HANS RICHTER: Everything Turns - Everything Revolves celebrates the life of the Dadaist, abstract painter and experimental filmmaker who was a major force in redefining art in the 20th century. In collaboration with friends including Marcel Duchamp, Sergei Eisenstein, Tristan Tzara, Mies Van Der Rohe and Hans Arp, Richter was at the leading edge of the European Avant Garde. His 1920s experimental films "Rhythmus 21" and "Ghosts Before Breakfast" established film as a unique art form, liberated from the theatrical conventions of script and actors.

After being forced out of Europe by the Nazis in 1941, Richter escaped to the U.S. where he became a prophet of modernism for a generation of young American artist/filmmakers, who would galvanize into the New American Cinema movement.

DVD / 2013 / 57 minutes

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ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV: ENTER HERE

Director: Amei Wallach

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here is a double portrait in film of the lives and work of Russia's most celebrated international artists, now American citizens, as they come to terms with their global lives and the new Russia. Two decades after he fled the Soviet Union, Ilya Kabakov overcomes his fears to install six walk-through installations in venues throughout Moscow, where he was once forbidden to exhibit his art. Amidst the cacophony of a city and a country in dizzying transition, he comes face to face with the memories that have made him who he is.

Through the eyes, work, and lives of artists who experienced Stalin's tyranny, through the rich underground art life during Brezhnev's stagnation and the rootlessness of immigration, the film bridges much of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

Its emotional heart is a letter which Ilya Kabakov's mother wrote him when she was 80, detailing the everyday horrors of her life in the Russia of revolution and after. The letter emerges in the art, in archival footage, and in voice-over.

With unparalleled access to the artists and to a global community of their friends and observers by acclaimed director Amei Wallach, who was Ilya Kabakov's first biographer, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here explores the ways in which art can outwit oppression, illuminate what comes next, and transcend its time, resonating with repressed societies today.

DVD (English and Russian with English Subtitles) / 2013 / 103 minutes

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LEVITATED MASS

Director: Doug Pray

LEVITATED MASS is Doug Pray's new documentary about a two-story tall, 340-ton, granite boulder that was moved from a quarry in Riverside to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and mounted atop the walls of a gigantic slot in the earth. The massive artwork, titled Levitated Mass, is the latest 'land sculpture' by one of America's most exciting and misunderstood artists, Michael Heizer. Heizer's sculpture references the expanse of art history - from ancient traditions of megalithic stones to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

The boulder's 105-mile journey from quarry to museum attracted international media attention and challenged the imagination of thousands of Southern Californians over 10 nights as it crawled through 22 cities on a football-field length, 206-wheeled trailer. The film captures this spectacle while weaving together the dramatic story of the reclusive Heizer, the ambitions of a major metropolitan museum, and the public's wild reactions to this massive display of modern yet eerily timeless conceptual art.

DVD / 2013 / 89 minutes

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ART IS THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION

Director: Manfred Kirchheimer

The anger and outrage captured by graphic artists have defined revolutions through the centuries. Printmakers have depicted the human condition in all its glories and struggles so powerfully that perceptions, attitudes and politics have been dramatically influenced. And the value and impact of this art is even more important today.

In the new documentary, Art Is...The Permanent Revolution, three contemporary American artists and a master printer help explain the dynamic sequences of social reality and protest. Among the wide range of 60 artists on display are Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, Kollwitz, Dix, Masereel, Grosz, Gropper, and Picasso. While their stirring graphics sweep by, the making of an etching, a woodcut and a lithograph unfolds before our eyes, as the contemporary artists join their illustrious predecessors in creating art of social engagement.

DVD / 2012 / 82 minutes

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BERT STERN: ORIGINAL MAD MAN

Director: Shannah Laumeister

Bert Stern's photography career began in the mailroom of Look Magazine - where he formed a close relationship with a young staffer named Stanley Kubrick - and quickly took off during the Golden Age of Advertising. Sought after by Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and the fashion world, Stern, like Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, became not just a photographer but a star in his own right. This is a story of self-creation - rise, fall, and reinvention - exploring creativity, celebrity, and desire through the eyes of a man who got everything he wanted. Almost.

DVD-R / 2012 / 87 minutes

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TRIUMPH OF THE WALL

Director: Bill Stone

This wry documentary takes viewers through the insane and passionate journey of two artists forced to ponder the unexpected. It begins as a simple chronicle of the construction of a thousand-foot stone wall by a novice builder on a large property in rural Quebec. But what was estimated as an 8-week project slowly morphs into a 10-year undertaking that makes both subject and filmmaker question their personal identities and the meaning of what they have made. Sometimes art - and life - are as much about the process as they are about the finished product.

DVD-R / 2012 / 102 minutes

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BEAT HOTEL, THE

Director: Alan Govenar

1957. The Latin Quarter, Paris. A cheap no-name hotel becomes a haven for a new breed of artists fleeing the conformity and censorship of America. Called the Beat Hotel, it soon became an epicenter of the Beat generation. Alan Govenar's feature documentary delves deep into this amazing place and time.

Fleeing the obscenity trials surrounding the publication of Howl, Allen Ginsberg, along with Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, happened upon the hotel on rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, and Brion Gysin. Run by Madame Rachou, the Beat Hotel was a hot bed of creativity and permissiveness, where Burroughs finished Naked Lunch; Ginsberg began his poem Kaddish; Somerville and Gysin invented the Dream Machine; Corso wrote some of his greatest poems; and Harold Norse wrote a novella, aptly called The Beat Hotel.

British photograher Harold Chapman's iconic photos and Scottish artist Elliot Rudie's drawings, interwoven with firsthand accounts, capture the Beats just as they were beginning to establish themselves, and bring The Beat Hotel to life.

DVD-R / 2011 / 82 minutes

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DAVID HOCKNEY: A BIGGER PICTURE

Director: Bruno Wollheim

Filmed over three years, this documentary is an unprecedented record of a major artist at work. It captures David Hockney's return from California to paint his native Yorkshire, outside, through the seasons and in all weathers. It tells the story of a homecoming and gives a revealing portrait of what inspires and motivates today's greatest living British-born artist.

DVD / 2010 / 60 minutes

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BREAKING THE MAYA CODE

Director: David Lebrun

For almost 2000 years, the ancient Maya of Central America recorded their history and ideas in an intricate and beautiful hieroglyphic script. Then, in the 16th century, Spanish invaders burned their books and ruthlessly extinguished hieroglyphic literacy. By the 18th century, when stone inscriptions were discovered buried in the jungles of Central America, no one on earth could read them. Breaking the Maya Code is the story of the 200-year struggle to unlock the lost secrets of this ancient civilization.

Based on archaeologist Michael Coe's book, called by The New York Times "one of the great stories of twentieth century scientific discovery," this amazing detective story is filled with false leads, rivalries and colliding personalities. It takes us from the jungles of Guatemala to the bitter cold of Russia, from ancient Maya temples to the dusty libraries of Dresden and Madrid.

The heroes of the story are an extraordinary group of men and women: linguists and mathematicians, artists and adventurers, archeologists and eccentrics - each finding a different piece of the puzzle. They include an English photographer, a German librarian, a Russian soldier, a California newspaperman, and an art teacher from Tennessee. An 18-year-old boy, immersed in the glyphs since early childhood, makes the final breakthrough.

The deciphered texts reveal an epic history of alliances and betrayals, powerful rulers, brilliant generals and sophisticated artist-scribes. They also unveil a world of kings and queens who shed and burned their blood to invoke the Vision Serpent, and an intricate cosmology that weaves together the lives of humans, the deeds of mythic heroes and the cycles of the planets and the stars. For the six million Maya living today the decipherment is a doorway to the past - uniting them with their own lost history and opening up an invaluable treasure for all of us.

DVD / 2007 / 116 minutes

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SAATCHI GALLERY 100, THE

Art that was "headbuttingly impossible to ignore" is how Charles Saatchi describes the work that intrigued him as he started to collect British art in the early 1990s. Damien Hirst's giant shark in formaldehyde, Tracey Emin's unmade bed and a chilling portrait of Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey are among the artworks that have since become icons of the decade. The Saatchi Gallery, now in the former County Hall in London, is a permanent home for a changing selection of Saatchi's world-famous collection.

The Saatchi Gallery 100 is a fast-paced and fascinating film featuring one hundred of these artworks, accompanied by reflections and anecdotes from the artists themselves. Sarah Lucas' confrontational self-portraits are among the highlights, as are the bold paintings of Gary Hume, photographs by Richard Billingham, sculptures of genetically mutated children by Jake and Dinos Chapman, and many more.

Like the collection itself, the film offers a unique understanding of why London has become the centre of the international art world over the past decade - and how art in Britain continues to surprise and challenge and delight.

DVD / 2004 / 50 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: BREAK WITH TRADITION (IMPRESSIONISM)

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit One: The Break with Tradition introduces students to the origins of modern art. Explains one of the most revolutionary aspects of Impressionists painting-its use of color-as seen in the works of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: CONTEMPORARY TRENDS

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Four: Contemporary Trends describes the American art scene in the 1940s when painters in New York developed Abstract Expressionism. Among the artists represented are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb and mark Rothko. Brings the discussion up to the present by examining the Minimal, Pop, Conceptual and Photo-realist movements.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: EXPLORING THE HEART & THE MIND (EXPRESSIONISM)

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Three: Exploring the Heart & the Mind discusses the Expressionist and Surrealist artists who sought to reveal deep feelings and subconscious thoughts in their paintings. Includes work by Rousseau, Redon, Roualt, Matisse, Nolde, Kirchner, Kandinski and others.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SPACE

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Two: The Reconstruction of Space highlights a major category of modern art-Cubism-and traces the influence of Cezzane's cubistic style on Picasso and Braque.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: COMPOSITION

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit Three: Composition
A Chronological exploration of the elements of composition, focusing on the element of pattern, from Gozzoli to Matisse; structure from Pollaiuolo to Cezzane; and expression from Sassetta to Degas. Students study two-dimensional and three-dimensional compositions and learn the similarities and differences between the two.

DVD / 1972 / 25 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: EXPRESSIONISM / ABSTRACTION

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit Two: Expressionism / Abstraction

Defines Expressionism as the distortion of form and color for emotional interpretation. It defines Abstraction as seeking to reduce solid objects to the flat plane surface. Students contrast Mondrian's highly intellectual approach with Kandinsky's emotionalized abstractions.

DVD / 1972 / 23 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: TECHNIQUES

The Metropolitian Musuem Seminars In Art:

Unit Four: Techniques

A detailed description of the technical aspects of working in various media: fresco, tempera, oil, watercolor, pastel, woodcut, etching and lithography.

DVD / 1972 / 26 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: THE ARTIST AS SOCIAL CRITIC/VISIONARY

The Metropolitian Musuem Seminars In Art

Unit Five: The Artist as Social Critic/ Visionary

Show how painters have expressed their ideas about relationships, protested vice or injustice, commented on human folly and achievement. Includes examples of social criticism by Botticelli, Goya, Hogarth and Riveria, Blake, Bosch, Dali, DeChirico

DVD / 1972 / 25 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: WHAT IS A PAINTING? REALISM

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit One: What is a Painting? Realism

Introduces the fundamental principles of art appreciation and explains technique, composition and personal expression. Students trace realism from Van Eyck to Hopper.

DVD / 1972 / 24 minutes

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ART WITH A MESSAGE: PROTEST & PROPAGANDA, SATIRE & SOCIAL COMMENT

This program investigates the ways various art forms are used to sway minds and to argue political causes. Examples include Napoleon and Hitler; artist such as Daumier, Hogarth and Shahn; writers Dickens, Swift and Orwell; and pop artists who mock popular ideals.

DVD / 1971 / 35 minutes

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CLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM: THE SOBER AND THE SUBLIME

This program explores Classicism and Romanticism as expressions of divergent human needs--one a leaning toward form, pattern and security; the other a desire for change, fantasy and feeling. It surveys these antithetical influences in architecture, painting, literature and music. Students study Classicism as a way of thought in the writings of Jefferson and Pope and explore Romanticism as a way of feeling in various works by Byron and Shelley.

DVD

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