Art-themed movies; fiction or non-fiction

Cafe Society
1

I’m a collector of movies; both fiction and documentaries. Lately I am on an Art kick. What can I look for to add to my collection?

For documentaries, I have acquired the following
Simon Schama’s Power of Art series
Private Life of a Masterpiece (I have only found one episode of this series)
Museum Masterpieces - The National Gallery, The Metropolitan
Rape of Europa

For fiction flicks, I have in my collection*
The Agony and The Ecstasy
Lust for Life
Sunday in the Park with George
Thomas Crown Affair (both versions)
Portrait of Jennie
Picture of Dorian Gray
Horse’s Mouth
How To Steal a Million
What Dreams May Come
Girl with the Pearl Earring
Art School Confidential

*There are probably others and I’m just drawing a blank right now.

2

The first film that came to my mind was The Mystery of Picasso. I found it absolutely fascinating.

3

I want to say “Drawing Restraint 9”, although it’s not so much about art as being very artistic, and I believe it’s not available in non-film form.

Then there’s “Exit through the gift shop” about street art and featuring some Banksy action.

I also like “Local Color” about a young man who befriends a local artist and spends the summer with him learning painting.

4

Ed Harris did a bio pic about Jackson Pollock, rather unimaginatively entitled Pollock.

5

Bloody good movie though. And would make a good double feature with Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock

Amongst other documentaries:

Infamy - graffiti artists
Impressionism – Revenge of the Nice - Courbet, Manet, Monet and Cezanne
The Divine Michelangelo
Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers & Tides - a naturalist sculptor guides us through his work
The Great Contemporary Art Bubble by Ben Lewis shows us what BS much of the modern market is.

6

Frida, the biopic on Frida Kahlo.

A few that go a little out of the realm of painting, which is where it seems you might be concentrating:

In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger. A documentary about Henry Darger, writer/painter of a massive story that spanned decades and was unknown to anyone until his death.

Sketches of Frank Gehry. A documentary of the architect, and the difficulty of transforming his loose sketches into actual buildings.

I Shot Andy Warhol. Biopic of Valerie Solanas in Andy Warhol’s Factory; the artistic element is not at the forefront.

7

Basquiat

8

Waldemar Januszczak has made a lot of documentaries for British television.
Scroll down to the middle of his Wikipedia page for a complete list.

I liked *Every Picture Tells a Story *and Paradise Found. The Michelangelo Code is entertaining, if a bit weird.

9

These are great! Thanks for the reminder about Frida – I do have that one (it was just in a different folder).

I’ve seen most of the Warhol-era themed films and wasn’t intrigued enough to own them for multiple viewings. I love the Goldsworthy documentary; I’m downloading that now. I’ve also snagged Goya’s Ghosts. I love Charles Laughton as Rembrandt, but it has not shown up on a bit torrent site that I can find.

Ironically, right after I started this thread, I took a look at what I had automatically recorded from PBS over the last week and it included a light ditty called Framed, where “an eccentric Welsh village learns that London’s National Gallery is storing its entire art collection in a nearby mine during the museum’s renovations — leading to curious encounters between the village locals and the gallery’s urbane, lovelorn curator. Trevor Eve (David Copperfield) and Eve Myles (Little Dorrit) star in this gentle comedy, based on Frank Cottrell Boyce’s best-selling novel.” It was fluffy, but quite enjoyable!

A few others I remembered seeing but will look to acquire is the Isabel Adjani film on Camille Claudel and a 2006 film about the Impressionists with Julian Glover as Claude Monet.

10

GREAT movie. Here are some others I like:

Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching and Rembrandt’s J’Accuse
Vincent & Theo
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting
Edvard Munch

11

I’m a HUGE Peter Greenaway fan and it kills me that Rembrandt’s J’Accuse was showing at a film festival about three blocks from house and I didn’t read about it until the day after the screening. It has yet to show up on a bit torrent and I’m itching to see it!

The rest are in my download queue – thanks! (I’ve seen the Vincent & Theo and Nightwatching, but will like having them in my collection).

12

Ghost World has plenty of scenes with Enid (Thora Birch) taking a remedial art class.

13

Not a movie, but the Vincent van Gogh episode of Dr Who last year was fantastic and a glowing tribute to Vincent and the joy of art.

14

**Crumb **- the documentary about R. Crumb is a must-see!
American Splendor - sort of a biopic/documentary hybrid about Harvey Pekar. He wrote the comic and had a few different artists draw it.
The Art of the Steal - documentary about the efforts by the city of Philadelphia to take control of the amazing Barnes Collection of Impressionist paintings, despite clear instructions in Barnes’s will that the paintings not be moved.
**Camille Claudel **- I’ve not seen this, but I’ve heard it’s very good; she was a sculptor and Rodin’s assistant and lover.

One Crazy Summer - a bit of a stretch, but John Cusack’s character wants to be a cartoonist.

15

I’ve not seen it myself but I’ve heard Herb and Dorothy is pretty good.

Trailer here.

16

Tangent - I mentioned Camille Claude above and wish I could find a torrent site that had it hardcoded subtitles. It is a very good film. I’ve got *The Art of the Steal *downloading now. I’ve seen both Crumb and American Splendor and wished I liked either artist as people or their work. They just don’t do much for me…

Flip - Thanks for the *Herb & Dorothy *link! I saw them interviewed on 60 Minutes years ago, but didn’t realize a whole film had been made about them. Downloading that now too!

I’m also downloading Modigliani and the José Ferrer version of Moulin Rouge (don’t care much about the Baz Thurman version).