Role credits on another great year for documentary film.
One of my favorite films this year, Lucy Walker's Waste Land, has been collecting awards throughout 2010, including the International Documentary Association's Feature Film Award and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. For good reason.
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz is renowned for creating photographic art from found objects. For his latest project on garbage, he decides to journey from New York to his native Brazil - the site of the world's largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho. He meets a group of professional recyclable material pickers trying to make a living amid poverty and despair, and finds his inspiration.
Muniz collaborates with his photographic subjects and in the process, uplifts them. They each help build their art pieces with the materials they collect each day, while sharing their individual, often heart-breaking life stories. It is an intimate and moving film experience to behold.
Filmed over the course of three years, Waste Land offers a wondrous lesson in the power of art and a helping hand to transform the human spirit - fantastic reminders as we enter a brand new year of life and documentaries.
Make it a great one!
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Fest Pt. 2 (Art)
More from my film festival files, in which our heroine - me - screens more recent documentaries here, there and everywhere.
While at the Newport Beach Film Festival last month, I screened The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, which follows London art critic Ben Lewis as he investigates the activities that led to the art market collapse in tandem with the world econmonic crisis. He suggests that the credit boom, along with artificial inflation of auction prices and backroom deals by galleries, auction houses, artists and collectors, sent prices into the stratosphere at record levels in the last ten years - and they had nowhere to go but down. This intriguing yet sometimes quirky film explores the habits of the uber-rich art community and how their activities affected the markets as a whole. It's like a very special episode of "Dynasty" from the '80s.
It's also not the only recent documentary suggesting that the art world is actually kind of creepy. I recently screened Don Argott's The Art of the Steal, which I missed at the Palm Springs International Film Festival earlier this year (only because I couldn't drag myself out of bed in time to drive down there), but caught at a local theater last month.
This provocative film chronicles one the most long-standing art world controversies, concerning the priceless art collection cherished (or held captive, depending on which side you fall on) within the walls of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. The self-made Dr. Albert C. Barnes collected an unbelievable trove of master works in his lifetime, with the intent that they be used for intimate study - not mass public exhibition, the likes of which he abhorred in the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art with its elite Main Line benefactors. Unfortunately, Dr. Barnes didn't have the best foresight and between his sudden death, restrictive estate instructions, revolving door of governance issues, and ultimately some suggested high-stakes collusion, his beloved art collection is now set to end up exactly the way he didn't want - in the hands of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The film is heavily skewed but serves as another compelling reminder that while money can't buy you love, it can buy you some art.
And support your (my) documentary film habit.
While at the Newport Beach Film Festival last month, I screened The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, which follows London art critic Ben Lewis as he investigates the activities that led to the art market collapse in tandem with the world econmonic crisis. He suggests that the credit boom, along with artificial inflation of auction prices and backroom deals by galleries, auction houses, artists and collectors, sent prices into the stratosphere at record levels in the last ten years - and they had nowhere to go but down. This intriguing yet sometimes quirky film explores the habits of the uber-rich art community and how their activities affected the markets as a whole. It's like a very special episode of "Dynasty" from the '80s.
It's also not the only recent documentary suggesting that the art world is actually kind of creepy. I recently screened Don Argott's The Art of the Steal, which I missed at the Palm Springs International Film Festival earlier this year (only because I couldn't drag myself out of bed in time to drive down there), but caught at a local theater last month.
This provocative film chronicles one the most long-standing art world controversies, concerning the priceless art collection cherished (or held captive, depending on which side you fall on) within the walls of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. The self-made Dr. Albert C. Barnes collected an unbelievable trove of master works in his lifetime, with the intent that they be used for intimate study - not mass public exhibition, the likes of which he abhorred in the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art with its elite Main Line benefactors. Unfortunately, Dr. Barnes didn't have the best foresight and between his sudden death, restrictive estate instructions, revolving door of governance issues, and ultimately some suggested high-stakes collusion, his beloved art collection is now set to end up exactly the way he didn't want - in the hands of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The film is heavily skewed but serves as another compelling reminder that while money can't buy you love, it can buy you some art.
And support your (my) documentary film habit.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Art
I am an unabashed, lifelong art fan, lucky enough to have lived in and visited many of the greatest cities in the world celebrating this amazing medium.
The PBS series, Independent Lens, is kicking off its 2009-2010 season tonight with one of my favorite documentaries of the year. Herb and Dorothy chronicles the adventures of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who have spent their married life of over 40 years together quietly amassing one of the world's most important and richest private contemporary art collections. Not so extraordinary until you consider that they are a now-retired postal worker and librarian living in a tiny, one-bedroom NYC apartment.
Since the 1960s, the couple has lived on Dorothy's paycheck and spent Herb's collecting the works of unknown artists (many now masters), primarily focusing on Minimalist and Conceptual art that was largely ignored in the early days. They eventually managed to acquire several thousand works of art, all stored in their apartment from floor to ceiling. And they have never sold a single piece! It's a fantastic and almost poignant tale captured by first-time filmmaker, Megumi Sasaki.
An incredible true story about finding one's passion in life and defying stereotypes. Definitely check it out - the Vogels had me smiling for days. :)
The PBS series, Independent Lens, is kicking off its 2009-2010 season tonight with one of my favorite documentaries of the year. Herb and Dorothy chronicles the adventures of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who have spent their married life of over 40 years together quietly amassing one of the world's most important and richest private contemporary art collections. Not so extraordinary until you consider that they are a now-retired postal worker and librarian living in a tiny, one-bedroom NYC apartment.
Since the 1960s, the couple has lived on Dorothy's paycheck and spent Herb's collecting the works of unknown artists (many now masters), primarily focusing on Minimalist and Conceptual art that was largely ignored in the early days. They eventually managed to acquire several thousand works of art, all stored in their apartment from floor to ceiling. And they have never sold a single piece! It's a fantastic and almost poignant tale captured by first-time filmmaker, Megumi Sasaki.
An incredible true story about finding one's passion in life and defying stereotypes. Definitely check it out - the Vogels had me smiling for days. :)
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