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The Royal Conservatory
Tickets: $175 Advance tickets only. Opening night tickets will not be mailed. They will be held at the Royal Conservatory for pickup at 6:30 pm on February 24. This film will be screened again on Sunday, February 28, at 4:30 pm at the Miles Nadal JCC, Al Green Theatre. Last year, Reel Artists screened a short Tamra Davis documentary showing one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s final interviews. This year, we present the Canadian premiere of Davis’ feature about the legendary artist. Though Basquiat started out in graffiti, he quickly rose to fame in 1980s New York, creating distinctive paintings and befriending icons like Andy Warhol and Deborah Harry. However, trouble soon took hold, and the artist died suddenly at 27. In this definitive documentary, Davis pays tribute to her friend Basquiat while acknowledging his difficulties. Interviews with Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Julian Schnabel and others uncover the mystique of Basquiat as both artist and man. Born in California, Tamra Davis studied filmmaking at the Los Angeles City College Cinema. She began her career directing music videos for artists including Hanson, Luscious Jackson and Sonic Youth, and directed her first feature, Gun Crazy, in 1992. Other features include Billy Madison, Half Baked and Crossroads. Davis has also directed documentaries like Mi Vida Loca and short films To the Curb and Sophie Goes to the Beach. She helmed a concert feature for the Indigo Girls and travelled to Africa, where she directed a film for the United Nations about Bill Clinton’s land mines initiative.
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Director/Producer: John Wyver In summer 2009, artist Antony Gormley, creator of many iconic sculptures including Angel of the North, launched the live artwork One & Other, a unique portrait of contemporary Britain. Over 100 days and nights, 2,400 participants representing every region of the UK spent one hour alone on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. This informative documentary follows the process behind Gormley’s monumental project and explores the origins of One & Other in the context of his earlier works. The film features archival material on key Gormley art from the past two decades, including lead figures moulded from his body that were crafted in early 1980s. A screenwriter and producer, John Wyver is president of Illuminations, a production company founded in 1982. Specializing in cultural subjects, it produces documentaries for television, video, DVD and the Internet.
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Director: Koji Sakabe
World-renowned Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara has gained cult status for his paintings of menacing children, among other works. Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara reveals the artist’s personal world; it records the journey Nara took along with Hideki Toyoshima, the Graf AtoZ team and many others who contributed to the creation and ultimate destruction of his mammoth project AtoZ—a handmade exhibition in his hometown of Hirosaki featuring 26 rooms, one for each letter of the alphabet. With Nara as leader, we see how this large creation began taking form and watch the development of a surprising outcome for both artwork and artist. Born in 1973 in Fukushima, Japan, Koji Sakabe began working as an assistant director for informational television in 1993. He has been affiliated with Tohokushinsha Film Corporation since 1998, mainly working with documentaries and acting as producer and filming director. Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara is his first major release as a director.
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Director/Producer: Katherine Knight Living in remote Newfoundland, performance artist Colette Urban balances everyday living with the world of the imagination. Shot at her oceanfront farm, this film captures Urban as she restages 13 enigmatic performances from her lifetime of work. Resilient, determined, self-aware and funny, Urban embraces the transformative power of art: “I’m timid in the real world. Performance and this idea of disguise are a real comfort. I’m someone else once I’m in that role of the performer.” Set against rugged east- coast beauty, Urban emerges as an empathetic, courageous and visionary character, someone following a dream and sustaining courage through acts of creative risk. Artist and filmmaker Katherine Knight teaches photography at York University. She is founder of Site Media, a Toronto film company producing portraits of creative artists in extraordinary places. Knight’s works are held in many collections, including those of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. In 2000, she was awarded the Duke and Duchess of York Prize. In 2006, Knight produced Annie Pootoogook, a half-hour television documentary for Bravo! and APTN.
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Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine Directors/Producers: Marion Cajori, Amei Wallach Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a cinematic journey inside the life and imagination of an icon of modern art. Louise Bourgeois has been at the forefront of developments in art for six decades. As a screen presence, she is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw. In this extraordinary documentary, her process is on full display. Filmed between 1993 and 2007, this feature presents a comprehensive documentary of creativity and revelation. The late Marion Cajori was an independent filmmaker who founded the non-profit Art Kaleidoscope Foundation in 1990 to produce in-depth cinematic portraits of individual creators and their art. Her film Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter won the Pratt-Whitney Grand Prize at the International Festival for Films on Art in Montreal. Amei Wallach is an art critic, commentator and curator. She was for many years chief art critic for New York Newsday and arts commentator for MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Vogue and Vanity Fair. We are now SOLD OUT of ADVANCE tickets for this screening of Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine. RUSH tickets will be available on February 26 at the Al Green Theatre box office at 6:40pm.
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Director: Takako Matsumoto
Director Takako Matsumoto takes us into the world of Yayoi Kusama, a polka-dot-loving artist recognized throughout the international cultural scene. This film captures Kusama’s creative process as she completes a series of 50 large monochrome drawings. As her work develops, one witnesses the essence of her art as it wells up in the conflict between life, death and love—sometimes quietly and sometimes just the opposite. Her firm self-confidence and dignified spirit, recorded in detail through Matsumoto’s invaluable footage, allows viewers to enter Kusama’s world, where there is never a dull moment. While studying at Tokai University, Takako Matsumoto’s independent film was selected for the sixth Pia Film Festival, which led to her career in the film industry. Currently, she works as a freelance director in television documentaries. She received the Takayanagi Award in Scientific Broadcasting for “Saving the Earth: Microorganism Hunters,” an episode of Spaceship Earth.
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Director/Producer: Andreas Schultz Taking us into Alex Colville’s studio and home, director Andreas Schultz creates an intimate portrait of one of the most famous living Canadian artists. Colville’s subjects are drawn from his immediate surroundings: the small town of Wolfville; Evangeline Beach, with the silhouette of Cape Blomidon on the horizon; the slopes of the Gaspereau Valley; the waters of the Grand Pré marshlands; and the 60-year relationship with wife Rhoda. By examining Colville’s work through the landmarks of his intimate life, Schultz places the painter’s famously opaque but highly realistic imagery into context. Andreas Schultz is a writer and director living and working in Berlin. Born in 1966 in Stuttgart, Germany, Schultz studied fine arts at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and then attended the Konrad Wolf Film and Television Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
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Director/Producer: Lauraine André-G. Françoise Sullivan, a co-signatory of 1948’s Refus global and one of the greatest figures of modern Canadian art, was a dancer, choreographer, photographer, sculptor and painter. This film propels us into her universe, where art knows no boundaries—we follow Sullivan in her public life, her life as a teacher at Concordia University and her private life. In her studio, where she is still active, she discusses her career. Si Sullivan m’était contée takes us into the sphere of this versatile artist who has played a central role in the evolution of art in Quebec since the 1940s. An artist, screenwriter and independent director and producer, Lauraine André-G. studied visual arts, political science, history, education and information technology. Besides producing art videos, she has scripted and directed documentary series for Téluq and was head of multimedia teams at LICEF Research Centre in Montreal and ICTT Laboratory in Lyon.
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Director/Producer: Catharine Chesterman
Takao Tanabe has been an important figure in Canadian art for over 60 years, contributing immensely to landscape traditions in contemporary Canadian painting. Born in British Columbia in 1926, Tanabe studied in Europe, the United States and Japan. This film chronicles Tanabe’s life from internment on Canadian soil during World War II to beginning painting during the early days of abstract expressionism to working through his current practice. Now in his early 80s, Tanabe is direct and articulate, giving the audience a true sense of the man behind a remarkable body of work. Catharine Chesterman hails from Vancouver. After living and working in London for 12 years as a commercial-spot producer, she returned to her hometown in 2003. While living in London, she collaborated with Prometheus Films and her father, Robert Chesterman, on many accomplished documentary features. Takao Tanabe: A Work of Art is her first documentary as a director/producer.
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Director/Producer: Susan Vogel Fold, Crumple, Crush presents a lively portrait of the first black African artist to achieve world acclaim at its highest levels. Director Susan Vogel provides an insider’s view of El Anatsui’s practice, a process that requires thousands of hours of labour to transform bottle caps and other scraps into vast, shimmering sculptures. We see the artist on the world stage of the Venice Biennale, in the small town of Nsukka as he goes about his daily life and inside his studio overseeing assistants. Behind Anatsui’s charming, easygoing demeanour, the film reveals a man who remains mysterious even to his dearest friends. Susan Vogel grew up in Beirut, has lived in Ivory Coast and now resides in New York City. She is a publisher, writer, filmmaker and internationally recognized curator of and expert on African art. Vogel has held many related positions at respected institutions including the Museum for African Art, which she founded, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University, where she is currently a professor. We are now SOLD OUT of ADVANCE tickets for this screening of Fold, Crumple, Crush. RUSH tickets will be available on February 27 at the Al Green Theatre box office at 6:40pm.
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Director/Producer: Marion Cajori Since 1969, when his work was first shown at Bykert Gallery in Soho, Chuck Close has been best known as a reinventor of portraiture. As we hear this articulate and affable man discuss his personal journey, we also watch him create a self- portrait. Numerous interviews with his subjects— friends, artists and family who discuss their own work and life in relation to his—make clear how far this artist has transcended categories like realism, process and abstraction. Throughout, the profound influence Chuck Close has had on his generation of art becomes undeniable. The late Marion Cajori was an independent filmmaker who founded the non-profit Art Kaleidoscope Foundation in 1990 to produce in-depth cinematic portraits of individual creators and their art. Her film Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter won the Pratt-Whitney Grand Prize at the International Festival for Films on Art in Montreal and was cited as “One of the Ten Best Films of 1993.” We are now SOLD OUT of ADVANCE tickets for this screening of Chuck Close. RUSH tickets will be available on February 27 at the Al Green Theatre box office at 8:40pm.
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Director: Michael Blackwood Filmed at the Schaulager in Basel, this film documents the exhibition 1:1, which featured sculptures by Polish artist Monika Sosnowska and a comprehensive survey of American artist Andrea Zittel. Both artists design spaces and each responds to surrounding architectures, lifestyles and traditions. The exhibition title 1:1 refers to the resulting “parallel realities” as well as to the scale of many works—Zittel and Sosnowska often test the relationship of art and reality in life size. They also share an interest in the modernist era, its social utopias and its concrete efforts to uniteart and life, in which architecture and design play an important role. Independent documentarian Michael Blackwood has produced and directed more than 100 films during the course of his career, aiming to create a permanent record of the leading figures in the cultural landscape of our time. His interests span architecture, art, music and dance. Blackwood’s films have been aired around the globe, and are in many museum collections.
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Director: Thomas Isler
This very personal documentary brings to light the important role Ernst Beyeler has had on the international art world. Beyeler has been an art dealer since 1947—helping the Museum of Modern Art acquire its first Picasso and showing the work of some of the greatest artists of modernism. He was instrumental in creating the world’s largest and most important international art fair, Art Basel, and created the Beyeler Foundation, where his impressive collection is on public view. Interviews with associates, assistants and friends reveal diverse, oft-hidden facets of Beyeler’s personality and knowledge, and reinforce his wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for art. Thomas Isler works as an independent filmmaker and artist. He was born in Basel in 1967, and in 1998 he received a degree in film and video from the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich. Since 2006 he has taught film at Haute école d’art et de design Genève and at École cantonale d’art Lausanne.
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ENCORE PRESENTATION Director: Tamra Davis Last year, Reel Artists screened a short Tamra Davis documentary showing one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s final interviews. This year, we present the Canadian premiere of Davis’ feature about the legendary artist. Though Basquiat started out in graffiti, he quickly rose to fame in 1980s New York, creating distinctive paintings and befriending icons like Andy Warhol and Deborah Harry. However, trouble soon took hold, and the artist died suddenly at 27. In this definitive documentary, Davis pays tribute to her friend Basquiat while acknowledging his difficulties. Interviews with Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Julian Schnabel and others uncover the mystique of Basquiat as both artist and man. Born in California, Tamra Davis studied filmmaking at the Los Angeles City College Cinema. She began her career directing music videos for artists including Hanson, Luscious Jackson and Sonic Youth, and directed her first feature, Gun Crazy, in 1992. Other features include Billy Madison, Half Baked and Crossroads. Davis has also directed documentaries like Mi Vida Loca and short films To the Curb and Sophie Goes to the Beach. She helmed a concert feature for the Indigo Girls and travelled to Africa, where she directed a film for the United Nations about Bill Clinton’s land mines initiative. We are now SOLD OUT of ADVANCE tickets for the Sunday, February 28 screening of Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. RUSH tickets will be available on February 28 at the Al Green Theatre box office at 4pm. |
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