The Secret Mona Lisa(2012)

Miss Hokusai(ja)

A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.

Hinter dem Vorhang: Das Geheimnis Vermeer(de)

The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution(en)

A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.

Mona Lisa Smile(en)

Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.

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.

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.

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.

Olev Subbi. Elu kuues peatükis(et)

Olev Subbi (1930–2013) was one of the most significant painters of the second half of the 20th century. His art constantly strived for harmony and beauty, reviving lost memories. This documentary reconstructs the environments of his paintings, features interviews with artists and Subbi’s contemporaries, and incorporates archival footage, creating a multilayered perspective on the life and work of this remarkable artist.

The Mystery of Mona Lisa(es)

The Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is a work by Leonardo Da Vinci and one of the most famous paintings in the world. It is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris and is visited by millions of people every year. The Gioconda has not only gone down in art history for its artistic value, but also for the mystery surrounding its creation. Painted between 1503 and 1519, Da Vinci's last great work was revolutionary for the painting techniques used. After several analyses of the painting, it is known that the artist first made the drawing and then applied the oil paint. Da Vinci was the inventor of the 'sfumato' or blurring technique, which consists of blurring the outline of the drawing and softening the colors to create a play of shadows that gives the figure a three-dimensional effect.

Be Still(en)

Already a successful portrait photographer, Hannah sets to reinvent this art form. Abandoning herself to a creative process that might easily be mistaken for madness, she's soon visited by mirror images of herself, as well as her daughter's ghost. Inspired by the life of photographer Hannah Maynard (1834-1918).

The Mysteries of Hieronymus Bosch(en)

Nicholas Baum goes on a journey to Den Bosch, Hieronymus Bosch's town, and gives his explanation about what he thinks the painter's works originally meant.

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.

The Cinematograph: Birth of an Art(fr)

Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 28, 1895, the historic day on which the first cinema performance took place.

A Portrait of William Blake(en)

A short documentary about the life work and philosophy of William Blake featuring an interview with John Higgs.

Matisse: A Sort of Paradise(en)

A survey of the painting of Henri Matisse, revealing the development of the idyllic quality in his work. Studies pictures from the beginning of his career, and follows the spontaneous flowering of color.

M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity(nl)

A portrait of the visionary Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972), according to his own words, taken from his diary, his correspondence and the texts of his lectures.

Egon Schiele: Between Love and Hate(de)

An account of the short life and the astonishing and provocative work of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918), seen through the peculiar point of view and the critic voices of the women who defined the paramount milestones of his existence: Gerti, his sister; Wally, his main model and lover; and Edith, his wife. A brief story of love, hate, betrayal and misfortune.

#monalisa(en)

People looking at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre – or are they just looking at themselves?

Nadar, le premier des photographes(fr)

A documentary about the French photographer Nadar aka Gaspard-Félix Tournachon

Eighteen fragments from Malcolm Le Grice’s After Leonardo(en)

"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