The world's museums are closed. What are you missing?
The world’s museums are closed. What are you missing? Take a real-time walk through the Louvre towards the “greatest painting ever” and contemplate what it would be like to be there yourself.
01 Jan 2003
Art critic and broadcaster Waldemar Januszczak wrote and directed this examination of a man who was not only a great painter but sculptor, wood carver, musician, print maker, journalist and ceramicist. As well as telling the remarkable story of Gauguin's life, Januszczak also celebrates Gauguin's achievements and examines the various accusations of sexual misconduct, familial neglect and racism that are frequently made against him.
10 Jun 2023
A fascinating look at the intersection of art, commerce, and digital ownership through the rise and crash of the NFT market.
17 Jul 2016
He was the master forger of the 20th century: the Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory. We will probably never know how many works by Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani still hang in museums and private collections. In addition to the life story of de Hory, the documentary also follows the paths of the two art swindlers Fernand Legros and Réal Lessard. In the style of an exciting investigation, the documentary traces the lives of three enigmatic figures: Those of the Hungarian painter and art forger Elmyr de Hory, the Frenchman Fernand Legros, also a famous art fraudster, and the Canadian Réal Lessard, also an art forger and lover of Legros. Legros was a character straight out of a novel: a millionaire at the age of 25 and a homosexual dandy who loved luxury limousines, fur coats, cigars, lavish parties and a relaxed lifestyle. He had an affair with Legros, but Elmyr de Hory may also have fallen in love with him.
01 Jan 2003
Constructing freestone buildings on the cheap, Pouillon made a name for himself at the end of the 1940s in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, shaking up his peers who only dreamed of towers and concrete bars. In Algiers, until Independence, he built in record time thousands of homes for the poorest, real urban projects inspired by traditional forms. In the Paris region, to build comfortable buildings quickly and well, nestled in the greenery, he becomes a promoter: this too adventurous bet leads him to prison and retains his reputation. Not very explicit about this complex affair, but seduced by a contemporary architecture that combines technical inventiveness and ancient references, Christian Meunier films by multiplying the angles of view. Today's lively atmospheres are interspersed with archive footage, while Pouillon's writings are read off. Moved, his collaborators evoke a demanding and generous man, with an infectious passion.
13 Mar 2018
In 1937 the Nazi regime held two exhibitions in Munich: one to stigmatize “Degenerate Art” (which they systematically looted and destroyed) and one, personally curated by Hitler, to glorify “Classic Art”. This immersive new documentary reveals the Nazi’s complicated relationship with classical and modern art, displaying an incredible number of masterpieces by Botticelli, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Chagall, Renoir and Gauguin amongst others, intertwined with human stories from the most infamous period of the twentieth century. A state-of-the-art detective story exploring the Nazis’ obsession with creative expression, Hitler versus Picasso combines history, art and human drama for an unforgettable cinema experience.
17 Nov 1945
Americans are preoccupied with the news, but need an escape from many of the events reported in the news. These escapes in the past have included dime store novels. The most accessible of these escapes is what are known as the funny papers, the set of serialized comic strips that are included within many newspapers. They appeal to all socio-economic classes, and all ages. Some of the earliest known from the late 19th century include the Yellow Kid, Little Nemo, Happy Hooligan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt & Jeff, and Bringing Up Father. Many cartoonists are seen in action. Some originated their characters, while others have taken over following the passing of the originator. The joy of many comic strips are the absurd and the fantastical, which are limited only by the imagination of the cartoonist. Others are grounded in reality, which add to their poignancy within the public mindset.
09 Apr 2018
A new look at Van Gogh, through the legacy of the largest private collector of artworks by the Dutch painter: Helene Kröller-Müller (1869-1939), who, in the early 20th Century, ended up buying nearly 300 of his works, paintings and drawings included.
25 Dec 2021
The illustrator and author paints scenes from a 70-year-long career, including his work with Roald Dahl. With David Walliams, Joanna Lumley, Peter Capaldi, Ore Oduba and Michael Rosen.
19 Nov 2021
Musing on the nature of memory, Don Hertzfeldt recounts stories about a kiss from The King, a floating child in a backyard and a giant foot.
29 Jun 2025
Peter Engelhardt - aptly named “PENG” - has dedicated his entire life to good design: as a renowned designer as well as a collector of everything that makes up everyday life in the 50s, 60s and 70s ... The well-known and the nameless, the precious and the superfluous, the special and the everyday. The Engelhardt collection once comprised over 30,000 objects. But the more Peter collected, the more space he needed - and the less money he had. The last stop for the time being: a dilapidated industrial wasteland near Bingen, rainwater and theft the biggest enemies. The preservation of the collection - or rather the fight against its destruction - in the old mine in Waldalgesheim became the 78-year-old's life's work.
23 Mar 2024
Marion is an artist with FSH, an incurable muscular myopathy. She guides us on the path she has taken to no longer identify with her illness.
01 Jan 1965
A meditative essay.
09 Jan 1981
An essay film about Jean-Paul Sartre and the French Existentialists, featuring Roland Barthes' last interview.
28 May 2016
"This installation or performance work puts my own earlier film of the Mona Lisa (1973) through another stage of transformation – my own irretrievable self of some 34 years ago is now also part of the subject I first saw the ‘actual’ ‘Mona Lisa’ when I was about thirteen. Of course I had seen dozens of reproductions in books and postcards by then and the popular mythology of the enigmatic smile was already well engrained in my mind. My strongest impression, as I recall, was how small and unsurprising it was – a heavily protected cultural icon – no longer really a picture – and I was much more excited by the painting of the distant landscape than by the face. My own ‘version’ of ‘la Giaconda’ was never an homage, nor like Marcel Duchamp’s ‘L.H.O.O.Q’, an attack on its cultural power. Instead it came from a fascination with change and transformation – maybe also with arbitrary appropriation." Malcolm Le Grice
01 Jan 1982
Frida Kahlo: declared a symbol of Mexican national heritage, made into a cult figure by the women's movement, praised by the likes of Picasso and Breton, this film uses images and music to reveal the soul of an icon.
15 May 2007
Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group university and, through it, the history of theater in Portugal, revealing two remarkable decades of the History of Portugal. Through the Academy of Coimbra, the documentary reproduces student life, the position of women in society, and the change in mentalities of being and being in the world. It reproduces the existing censorship and the fight against the dictatorship, the resistance to an exhausted regime, as well as the emerging contradictions of the democratic revolution. CITAC has a heritage of 50 years of experience in Coimbra. It carries with it the possibility of the theatrical and civic formation of thinking bodies, constituting a proper ball of a possible model, generation by generation, between studies, theater, and social drama.
06 Nov 2024
200 years after its opening and a century after acquiring its first Van Gogh works, the National Gallery is hosting the UK’s biggest ever Van Gogh exhibition. Van Gogh is not only one of the most beloved artists of all time, but perhaps the most misunderstood. This film is a chance to reexamine and better understand this iconic artist. Focusing on his unique creative process, Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers explores the artist’s years in the south of France, where he revolutionised his style. Van Gogh became consumed with a passion for storytelling in his art, turning the world around him into vibrant, idealised spaces and symbolic characters.
01 Jan 1984
Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.
29 Oct 2002
Biography of the American Painter and Illustrator, Norman Rockwell.
09 Jul 2025
Francisco Esteves, an elevator technician, lives between routine and a quiet passion for art. Inspired by the music of The Doors, he reflects on the paths not taken and the dreams that still drive him, in a constant search for meaning and freedom.