The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. In these postmodern days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid. Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.
The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. In these postmodern days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid. Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.
2008-09-18
7.333
6.3Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behavior. In Morley’s search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.
7.1In the last days of the Second World War, a deserting soldier disrupts a tranquil and isolated mountain community. For one family, his arrival brings excitement and romance, but tragedy lies in wait.
7.0The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
6.3Follows the lives of three families who live in a three-story building in a Roman neighbourhood.
Three years after the death of her beloved child, Elouise, Mara still feels her presence when she sits on the butterfly bedding in front of the jar with her ashes in it. Mara arranges a twelfth birthday party for Elouise, further alienating her from her husband, Richter, and remaining daughter, Hannah. Although Mara eventually vacates Elouise's room at the insistence of her husband, she does find a way to stay close to Elouise. Before long, however, Hannah discovers her mother's secret.
8.1Follow the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, Paul endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.
6.6In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
8.0The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
7.6Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.
5.9During a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by Rebecca, the glamorous new counselor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.
6.6Set over three generations and beginning with a sexually frustrated orderly during WWII who relieves his tensions in the most outlandish, gross ways. The result of his liaison is a glutton who grows up to be a champion speed eater. He produces a child who becomes obsessed with taxidermy.
7.2A pub landlord in a previously thriving mining community struggles to hold onto his pub. Meanwhile, tensions rise in the town when Syrian refugees are placed in the empty houses in the community.
7.8Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
7.6Dilli, a convicted criminal, is out on parole to meet his daughter. However, a drug bust sets him off on a mission to save the life of police officers.
5.4While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him.
5.4After moving into a cottage together, two young lovers confront horrors of a forgotten childhood.
7.2While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
7.3Just out of jail, rumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.
8.1A sadistic serial rapist and murderer of young women terrorizes a small province in 1980s South Korea. To prevent further crimes, three increasingly desperate detectives with conflicting methods race against time to unravel the violent mind of the killer in a futile effort to solve the case.
6.9Kid is an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
0.0A nuanced portrait of a new generation, Dear Thirteen is a cinematic time capsule of coming of age in today’s world. Through the eyes of nine thirteen-year-olds, we see how pressing social, geographical and political challenges are shaping, and being shaped by, young people: rising anti-Semitism in Europe, guns in America, gender identity and racial divisions across Australia and Asia. With no adult commentary outside the filmmaker, Dear Thirteen offers an intimate view into the universal uncertainty inherent in growing up.
7.0When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
7.0I left Lebanon in 2006. For the past 10 years I lived in 7 countries, 10 cities, and 21 homes. I slept in 21 beds, cooked in 21 kitchens, cleaned 21 bathrooms, stared at 21 windows, wrote on 21 desks, and locked 21 doors behind me. I packed all of my life into two suitcases and a backpack. The rest stayed behind. Somebody somewhere uses my bed, somebody somewhere has my shoes. I was there. But now I am here.
0.0In 1988, art student Damien Hirst and a group of like-minded associates mounted an exhibition in a building in the East End of London. Entitled Freeze, it was a huge critical and commercial success, propelling Hirst and the group into the spotlight of the avant-garde. More than five years later, Hirst exhibits to international acclaim and is regularly derided in the tabloid press. This portrait of Hirst, which resumes the Omnibus season, is presented as a drug-induced nightmare after Hirst has been put to sleep by a sinister dentist, played by Donald Pleasence. In between interviews with fellow Freeze artists including Angus Fairhurst , Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin , Hirst is seen preparing Mother and Child Divided, his work for last year's Venice Blennale. The piece consists of a cow and a calf, each sawn in half, pickled in formaldehyde and exhibited in four tanks.
A collection of personal anecdotes from those who have navigated through a tumultuous year in America.
6.8Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
10.0A dual portrait of young drifters on the streets of Odessa, where every day seems the same and the future keeps getting further away.
6.7The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.
0.0Crazy cat lady or world-class musician? You decide. Dorian Rence smashes our notions of what matters and who counts in "Feral Love." Dorian was the seventh woman to join the New York Philharmonic. In her 40-year career she has performed with all the greats: Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Yo Yo Ma to name a few. And she cares for a feral cat colony in the tunnels of New York City.
5.0The inner world of the great painter Max Ernst is the subject of this film. One of the principal founders of Surrealism, Max Ernst explores the nature of materials and the emotional significance of shapes to combine with his collages and netherworld canvases. The director and Ernst together use the film creatively as a medium to explain the artist's own development.
0.0With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.
0.0Singapore GaGa is a 55-minute paean to the quirkiness of the Singaporean aural landscape. It reveals Singapore's past and present with a delight and humour that makes it a necessary film for all Singaporeans. We hear buskers, street vendors, school cheerleaders sing hymns to themselves and to their communities. From these vocabularies (including Arabic, Latin, Hainanese), a sense of what it might mean to be a modern Singaporean emerges. This is Singapore's first documentary to have a cinema release. With English and Chinese subtitles.
9.3In the crystal clear waters off the coast of Borneo, a unique way of life threatens to disappear forever. For generations, the Badjao were oceanic nomads, living in harmony with the sea as fishermen and free divers. Nowadays, however, only a few Badjao remain, like Alexan, who still remembers the old ways. He hopes to pass his knowledge along to his ten-year-old nephew Sari, but time and opportunities are running out. Sari loves the sea, but it can only offer a hard life of subsistence fishing, while the nearby tourist resort sings a siren song of easy money.
7.4A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.
A poetic documentation of the Long Beach Island, NJ community as they battle local politics, cope with personal tragedy, and band together after Hurricane Sandy.
6.0After the Kyrgyzstan Independence in 1991, the ancient practice of Ala-Kachuu ("grab and run") returned. Some women escape the men that kidnap them, but many remain married because of tradition and the fear of scandal.
1.0Static was filmed from a helicopter circling around the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour. It was shot shortly after the monument was fully re-opened following the September 11th attacks. Flying alongside the statue, the camera presents us with startling close-up views of its oxidised copper surface. The continual sense of movement is disorienting, undermining its sense of permanence and stability.
0.0Seeing is to painting what listening is to politics. Survival as an artist demands both. Paint Until Dawn is a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan (1927-1999), who painted all night to push the limits of vision. His life and thought reveal a correlation between art and activism through an interesting angle: the creative process itself.
6.5"Plastic Paradise" is an independent documentary film that chronicles Angela Sun's personal journey of discovery to one of the most remote places on Earth, Midway Atoll, to uncover the truth behind the mystery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Along the way she encounters scientists, celebrities, legislators and activists who shed light on what our society's vast consumption of disposable plastic is doing to our oceans -- and what it may be doing to our health.
7.3This film is an album of Native womanhood, portraying a proud matriarchal society that for centuries has been pressured to adopt different standards and customs. All of the women featured share a belief in the importance of tradition as a source of strength in the face of change.