Cartoon College(2012)

The Painting(es)

For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.

Empire of the Nude: The Victorian Nude(en)

The Victorian era is often cited for its lack of sexuality, but as this documentary reveals, the period's artists created a strong tradition surrounding the classical nude figure, which spread from the fine arts to more common forms of expression. The film explains how 19th-century artists were inspired by ancient Greek and Roman works to highlight the naked form, and how that was reflected in the evolving cultural attitudes toward sex.

The Lost Portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Culture Show Special(en)

In 2009, art detective Dr Bendor Grosvenor caused a national scandal by proving that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's iconic portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the rebel Stuart who almost seized power in 1745, was not in fact him. Keen to make amends, and suspecting that a long-lost portrait of the prince by one of Scotland's greatest artists, Allan Ramsay, might still survive, Bendor decides to retrace Charles's journey in the hope of unravelling one of the greatest mysteries in British art.

Batman & Bill(en)

Everyone thinks that Bob Kane created Batman, but that’s not the whole truth. One author makes it his crusade to make it known that Bill Finger, a struggling writer, actually helped invent the iconic superhero, from concept to costume to the very character we all know and love. Bruce Wayne may be Batman’s secret identity, but his creator was always a true mystery.

Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World(de)

An account of the life and work of Swiss painter, sculptor, architect and designer H. R. Giger (1940-2014), tormented father of creatures as fearsome as they are fascinating, inhabitants of nightmarish biomechanical worlds.

Enrique Herreros(es)

The story of Enrique Herreros (1903-1977), cartoonist, advertiser, poster designer, talent manager, actor, producer and filmmaker, and the most daring of mountaineers; the man who, along with his companions from the so-called “other Generation of '27,” brought Hollywood to Madrid's Gran Vía, turning a grey and sinister post-war city into the capital of an incipient and ambitious cultural industry.

Disney: Through the Looking Glass(es)

Tito del Amo, a passionate 72-year-old researcher, takes the final step to unravel the enigma about the alleged Spanish origin of the American cartoonist Walt Disney, making the same journey that his supposed mother made to give him up for adoption in Chicago. A journey that begins in Mojácar, Almería, Spain, and ends in New York. An exciting adventure, like Alicia's through the looking glass, to discover what is truth and what is not, with an unexpected result.

Phantasia(xx)

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story(en)

Exploring the rise and fall of the groundbreaking animated series ​Ren & Stimpy​ and its controversial creator, John Kricfalusi, through archival footage, show artwork and interviews with the artists, actors and executives behind the show.

Oskar Kokoschka : Portraits européens(fr)

Beware Haderer(de)

A staged TV portrait of the Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer; and first collaboration with Maria Hofstätter.

Max Ernst: Journey into the Subconscious(en)

The 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.

Ugly Beauty(en)

Documentary in which art critic Waldemar Januszczak argues that beauty is still to be found in modern art, despite several recent books claiming the contrary.

Emil Nolde(en)

For the whole of his long life Emil Nolde, the leading German Expressionist, luxuriated in colour. Before the First World War in Berlin he made many paintings of the theater, music-hall and opera; he loved flowers and even coaxed a garden out of the salty soil of the Baltic coast, where he had built himself an isolated house. His parents were Frisian peasants and he loved the landscape of North Friesland: it was the theme of many of his pictures. But the Nazis disapproved of his work and finally forbade him to paint at all. Although Nolde was already in his seventies when this happened, no political regime could stifle his vision. At great danger to himself he continued to work, making watercolour sketches the size of postcards, which he called 'unpainted pictures,' meaning them to serve as sketches for the large oils he would paint when he was free. And he did outlive the Nazi regime, marrying a twenty-eight-year-old woman in 1948 and painting up until the year before he died.

Kandinsky(de)

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.

Lee Miller: A Life on the Frontline(en)

A documentary celebrating Lee Miller, a model-turned-photographer-turned-war reporter who defied anyone who tried to pin her down, put her on a pedestal, or pigeonhole her in any way.

They Are Here(en)

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.

Carceller, the Man Who Died Twice(es)

The life story of Vicente Miguel Carceller (1890-1940), a Spanish editor committed to freedom who, through his weekly magazine La Traca, connected with the common people while maintaining a dangerous pulse with the powerful.

An Unsatisfying Metaphor(en)

Documentary about the history of 20th century globalization through the lens of the World Trade Organization's changing art collection; from works of human subjects showcasing the potential of dignified labor, to their replacement with abstract maps and grids for the valorization of the modern trade system.

The Leunig Fragments(en)

With an anarchic and life-affirming heart, this documentary feature celebrates self-expression, friendship, life and death, and the power of the imagination to ignite, enrage, heal and inspire. With exclusive, intimate access to Michael Leunig - one of Australia’s most renowned artists - we reveal the man behind the household name.