OPENING NIGHT SCREENING AND CELEBRATION
6:30 pm  Special opening night screening at the Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre, Royal Ontario Museum, followed by an opening night celebration at Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner

Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (James Crump, 2007, 72 minutes) * Director present

This feature documentary follows Sam Wagstaff’s transformation from innovative museum curator and pioneering collector to lover and mentor of Robert Mapplethorpe during the heady years of the 1970s and 1980s New York City art scene. Featuring interviews with Patti Smith, Dominick Dunne and other art-world luminaries, this fascinating film reveals the symbiotic relationship the two men shared, the power dynamics between them and their shared pursuit of aesthetic perfection. The New York Times says of the film: “Talent, beauty, sex, death and finally pots of money; their story is a perfect storm.”

Following the screening, join director James Crump in conversation with Maia Sari Sutnick, Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario and organizer of the 1981 exhibition “The Sam Wagstaff Collection.”

Robert Wilson: Video Portraits, Gallery HD

7:00 pm CANADIAN PREMIERE Robert Wilson: Video Portraits (Marina Zenovich, 2008, 27 minutes)
Between 2004 and 2006, acclaimed theatre and opera director and visual artist Robert Wilson created more than 50 video portraits featuring movie stars, royalty, Nobel Prize-–winning authors, animals and ordinary people. This documentary chronicles the creation of these unique works of art and features interviews with Robert Wilson, Her Serene Highness Princess Caroline of Monaco, Salma Hayek, Graydon Carter, Macaulay Culkin and Bob Colacello.

Takashi Murakami, Gallery HD

WORLD PREMIERE Takashi Murakami (Marina Zenovich, 2008, 27 minutes) One of the most widely recognized of all contemporary artists, Takashi Murakami has attracted widespread attention for bridging fine art and popular culture, raising eyebrows along the way for affiliating himself with the realm of retail commercialism. Featuring highlights from his current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, this film offers a unique and revealing look into Murakami’s world.

Jeff Wall photo © Jeff Wall

8:30 pm WORLD PREMIERE Jeff Wall: Retrospective (Michael Blackwood, 2007, 58 minutes)
Jeff Wall is widely recognized as not just Canada’s art superstar but one of the most adventurous and inventive artists working anywhere in any medium. His current touring retrospective debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and surveyed his photo-based work from the late 1970s to the present. In this film, Peter Galassi, co-curator of the exhibition and Chief Curator in theDepartment of Photography at MOMA, speaks with Wall about the artist’s influences and working process as they tour the exhibition.

Rodin: The Sculptor's View, Jake Auerbach

1:00 pm Rodin: The Sculptor’s View (Jake Auerbach, 2006, 53 minutes)
Auguste Rodin is a colossal figure in 19th- and early-20th-century sculpture—when he died in 1917, he had become a hero in both France and Britain. In this film, Antony Gormley, Marc Quinn, Rachel Whiteread, Rebecca Warren, Barry Flanagan, Tony Cragg, Anthony Caro and Richard Deacon—eight contemporary British sculptors—look afresh at Rodin’s work and gauge its influence almost a century after the artist’s death.

Henry Moore: Illuminations

2:30 pm The Art of Henry Moore (Illuminations, 2004, 60 minutes) * John Wyver, director, present
With a soundtrack derived from the artist’s words as found in interviews, articles and letters, this film rediscovers the art of Henry Moore, returning to the works themselves -and to Moore’s own thoughts about them. Many of the artist’s most significant sculptures are featured.

Richard Serra: To See is to Think © Westdeutscher Rundfunk 2006

4:00 pm Richard Serra—To See is to Think (Maria Anna Tappeiner, 2006, 43 minutes)
Richard Serra is one of the pre-eminent sculptors of our era, known for works that emphasize materiality and the relationships between the viewer, the site and the work. In this film, which documents many of Serra’s outdoor works and follows the artist from a foundry in Germany to California, Connecticut, San Francisco and Switzerland, Serra shares with us his philosophy of minimalism, material and space.

Beuys and Beuys, ZDF, Germany

7:00 pm Beuys and Beuys (Peter Schiering, 2006, 35 minutes)
* In German with English subtitles
In the words of Joseph Beuys, “every human being is an artist.” Inspired by a deeply personal vision of art, the German sculptor, activist and aesthetic pioneer created art in myriad media. In his most spectacular actions, he described paintings to a dead rabbit and lived with a coyote for three days in a New York gallery. In this film, performance artist Marina Abramovic, filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief, Beuys’s personal secretary, Heiner Bastian, contemporary-art specialist Friedhelm Mennekes and curator Klaus Biesenbach examine his legacy 20 years after his death.

Anish Kapoor, Gallery HD

CANADIAN PREMIERE Anish Kapoor (John Wyver, 2007, 27 minutes) * Director present
The sculptor Anish Kapoor acknowledges that he has made “some pretty big things.” Few of his works, however, have posed construction problems like Svayambh, a massive block of sticky, splodgy red wax on rails that was created for Kapoor’s solo exhibition in 2007 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. This film chronicles the creation of this emotionally and politically potent artwork.

Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Life of Bas Jan Ader © 2007 American Scenes, Inc. & VPRO

8:30 pm Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Life
of Bas Jan Ader (Rene Daalder, 2006, 70 minutes)
In 1975, Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader disappeared at sea while attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat as part of his artwork In Search of the Miraculous. This film traces the life and work of Jan Ader and evolves into an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean. Featuring artists Tacita Dean, Rodney Graham, Marcel Broodthaers, Fiona Tan and many others.

Phillip Johnson–Diary of an Eccentric Architect, Checkerboard

2:00 pm Philip Johnson—Diary of an Eccentric Architect (Barbara Wolf, 1996, 55 minutes)
A fascinating look into the mind of one of the most creative and significant architects of our time. Philip Johnson takes us on a guided tour of his property in New Canaan, Connecticut, offering a rare look at his Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Study and Lake Pavilion, as well as his famous Glass House, recently opened to the public by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture, Filmoption International Inc.

3:30 pm Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture (Teri Wehn-Damisch, 2006, 52 minutes) * Architect present
A unique glimpse into the world of Phyllis Lambert, renowned Canadian architect, urban activist and founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The figure that emerges from Wehn-Damisch’s composite portrait is a visionary thinker with boundless energy, a feisty woman driven by joyful ambition, a free spirit.

Introduction by Marianne McKenna, partner, KMPB Architects. Special post-screening conversation with Phyllis Lambert and Globe and Mail critic Lisa Rochon.