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- Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.
- Architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden where he can keep the politics of architecture at a comfortable distance as he enjoys status and praise for his unique modernist buildings. In "The Practice of Architecture", critic Kenneth Frampton visits Zumthor at his studio where the two are surrounded by models, designs and plans for current and future projects throughout Europe and the United States. Frampton questions the renowned architecture on the motives and methods behind some of his most famous works, including his Zinc-Mine-Museum in Norway and the highly acclaimed Therme Vals, a stunning hotel and spa built over the thermal springs in Graubünden. While walking us through his career, Zumthor discusses his penchant for minimalism, the importance of landscape, light and material, and the architectural theory behind his stunningly precise style.
- Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.
- Ralph Erskine approaches his work with care, delicacy and a love that radiates through his designs. Both passionate and thoughtful, Erskine's architecture shows a dedicated knowledge of the areas where his works are constructed. While born in London, Erskine found himself working mainly out of Sweden, becoming attached to both the country itself and the influence the area had on his career. Erskine demonstrates his deep understanding of the country by factoring elements such as climate and economy into his designs. He explains to us his desire to create in both an aesthetically unique and functionally sound manner, noting the importance of becoming familiar with the space one is working with. Inspired by his own personal experiences with the nature and culture of Sweden, Erskine observed what the country needed both practically and visually. The results of this focused attention present themselves in the form of Erskine's many community housing projects, university buildings and work spaces. Erskine believed that architecture should cater to the needs of a specific area and was driven by this as he experimented with shape and structure to create beautiful and efficient spaces.
- Narrated by critic Donald Kuspit, A New Spirit in Painting: 6 Painters of the 1980's explores the creative paths being forged by a collection of modern artists. Through observations of their pieces and intimate discussions ignited by the meaning behind the work, we gain a rare insight into the minds behind the rousing new wave of painting. Often times dark and daring in their aesthetic, the artists have recovered myth, history, symbols and eroticism to use as subject matter, recharging the gestures of previous generations with new intensity and inspiration.
- No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.
- In 1985 director Christian Blackwood embarked on a documentary project about his landlords and neighbors at 115 Bank Street in Manhattan, Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. The project resulted in a beautifully intimate depiction of the two and how they exist within their creative and personal partnership. Murray Louis first joined Alwin Nikolais at Henry Street and quickly became an important innovator in the Playhouse Company (later called the Nikolais Dance Theatre), acting as Nikolais's lead dancer and longtime collaborator. Christian Blackwood accompanies Nik and Murray during a season of performances of new work, both in the U.S. and abroad. "Nik and Murray: The Dances of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis" is a lively and informative portrait of the two choreographers in which they reveal their insight into dance and their own unique way of creating work.
- Encouraging visitors to engage and connect with on site artist's, Artpark provides a unique environment for those craving culture away from the whirring city. Located in Lewiston, New York the outdoor venue opens itself to artists, musicians and performers seeking a spot to reflect and create. During the summer seasons Artpark serves as an immersive experience, inviting the public to observe the artists as they work. Artpark People observes the vibrant scene and captures candid interactions between artist and onlookers. With a heavy emphasis on outdoor space and environmental influence, Artpark asserts itself as a cultural and communal haven for creatives.
- Philip Guston is a powerful staple of the abstract expressionist movement, though he would prefer it be referred to as the New York School. Along with composers, choreographers and his fellow visual artists, Guston found his place in the avant garde. Often times finding modern art almost too accessible, Guston strives to create pieces that encourage audiences to engage, but not without deep consideration. His paintings rely heavily on motif and repetition, emphasizing the importance of his often political subjects. Perhaps his own worst critic, Guston had a habit of destroying the work he did not find himself connecting with. Guston had no interest in simply presenting an image that he was not fully absorbed in. His passion for his work comes through in heavy brush strokes which turn and travel expressively across the canvas. In reference to his own process and the diversity within his work Guston tell us "Nothing is ever solved in painting. It's a continuous chain that sometimes doesn't go in one line, but goes in a serpentine line or in crooked paths, detours, which have to be investigated." (Philip Guston) In both his paintings and career Guston did not fear exploration but welcomed it, eagerly following the winding path of his ever evolving art.
- Pop culture and modern media flooded the art world throughout the 1960's, giving artists new means and methods for a cultural revolution. Leading the scene of experimental and avant garde art were innovators such as Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. American Art in the 1960's follows said artists and many others as they venture through the movements of pop art, abstract expressionism, collage, sculpture and Expressionistic Cubism. Their audience followed along loyally as the artists' dove into new imagery that held a mirror up to society and examined the roots of culture. Narrator and writer, Barbara Rose makes the insightful observation: "As art was integrated into American life, it became more difficult to shock the public. Serious, profound, frivolous, absurd and ultimately tragic, the contradictions and paradoxes of the Sixties were reflected in American art of that revolutionary decade." (Barbara Rose) With no fear of experimenting with new mediums, the artists discuss the inspiration behind their work and the desire they feel to create.
- With the participation of renowned architect, John Hejduk, members of the graduating class at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union in New York City explain their imaginative solutions to their fifth-year thesis assignment. In lucid and informed reasoning, they individually describe their sources, processes and progress in architectural language. Through a riveting combination of landscape, space, narrative and creation, this graduating class presents a vibrant and captivating image for the future of architecture. The students' passionate explanations of their projects impressively conveys the empowering nature of inspired professional education.
- Serving as a detailed portrait of the acclaimed Japanese architect, this film engages with Kisho Kurokawa, who employs Buddhist ideas in a symbiosis of traditional forms and western modernism to achieve an intercultural architecture. In a merging of philosophy, culture, space and narrative, Kurokawa has created a body of work that he defines as symbiotic, which he specifies as "the simultaneous expression of conflicting things in a symbiotic manner" (Kisho Kurokawa). Kisho Kurokawa: From Metabolism to Symbiosis follows him to many of his major accomplishments in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nara, Osaka, Berlin, Paris, Chicago and New York.
- The band of American artists known as the New York School toyed with tradition and rebelled against the Renaissance. In the early throes of Abstract Expressionism artists such as Jack Tworkov and Robert Motherwell were intent on working from the unconscious, eager to stray from the structured composition of the European work they had studied throughout school. Feeling as though free association yielded their best results, the painters, poets and performers of the New York School took a surrealist approach that was concerned less with aesthetic and more with expression. Those associated with the School were unified by their desire to create from within. While walking through the studios of Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, and Lee Krasner, writer and narrator Barbara Rose notes, "Many were immigrants to America, but slowly they turned their eyes from Europe, looking into themselves and into their own subjective conflicts and experiences. As a result, they created a monumental, dramatic art that remains a singular expression of the crucial modern quest for individuality and personal freedom." Never knowing exactly how their pieces would turn out, the artists of the New York School embraced their own complex humanity and worked from a place of bold, sporadic realness.
- Reclaiming the Body: Feminist Art in America features a collection of passionate, determined artists who have taken creation, performance and visual storytelling into their own hands. Loosely based on the two-part BAD GIRLS exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, Reclaiming the Body goes beyond the scope of the exhibition to include other significant contributors to feminist art. From sculpture to photography, the featured work challenges society's notion of the female form, femininity and gender identity. The film spans three generations of artists, from Louise Bourgeois to Janine Antoni, in order to give an overview of the history of this important movement from the 1960s to the present day.
- In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York, Atlanta, and in various European cities. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. The group was joined on the European tour by Ray Copeland, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and Johnny Griffin, traveling as part of George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival road company.
- Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, roots himself in cultural visions of space, landscape, and juxtaposition. Inspired deeply by his home and heritage, Ando proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. Believing in the importance of carpentry and craftsmanship, Ando pays tribute to his culture and the way in which architecture is approached through the body. Showcasing his individuality through urban complexes, residences and chapels, Ando presents the work of his formative years, before embarking on projects in Europe and the United States.
- Like the forums and amphitheaters of ancient days, movie palaces like Brooklyn's Kings Theater were, in their hayday, cultural epicenters and community defining landmarks - microcosmic fantasy worlds where neighborly warmth blended with the glitz and grandeur of Hollywood magic. When The Kings, one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area, finally closed its doors in August of 1977, a neighborhood mourned. "Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush", made in 1979 by director Christian Blackwood, is both a eulogy and a love letter to this Brooklyn institution. In a series of heartfelt interviews, local aficionados of the erstwhile palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, Vaudevillians, and devoted former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.
- A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.
- Driven by their mutual admiration of classical architecture, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown have worked together to create a space of unique post-Modernist construction. Filmed during the design and realization of the Sainsbury extension to the National Gallery in London, the husband and wife team discuss their past work and the shared principles that led to their precise, historically inspired approach to modern architecture.
- Georg Baselitz: Making Art after Auschwitz and Dresden explores the artist's brilliant career through his 2007 retrospective exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Accompanied by curator Norman Rosenthal, who first exhibited paintings by Baselitz in the early 1970's, the artist discusses painting, sculpture and the trajectory of his work. The exhibit emphasizes Baselitz ability to create imagery that deals unflinchingly with his position as a post-war artist. In responding to contemporary experience and exploring his own painterly instincts, Baselitz creates symbols which reflect deep-rooted human dilemmas and concerns.
- Pairing his collection of figurative paintings with an astute conversation surrounding mortality and humanity, "Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact" offers personal insight into the mind of an artist. In an interview led by friend and art critic, David Sylvester, Bacon opens up about his work and the, often times, grotesque and macabre tone of his paintings. His representations of the human figure in portraits and triptychs link him, in his view, to the distorted realism of Van Gogh and Picasso. With his unique take on life and death, Bacon explains to us the dichotomy of his art through an unexpectedly optimistic thesis which he dubbed the "brutality of fact". As Bacon's striking art conveys, with the acceptance of death comes a passionate vitality for life.
- By the end of the 1980's a new architectural sensibility challenged the prevailing post-Modern attitude and brought forth new and daring designs. Driven by the philosophy and theory of Jacques Derrida, the architects of Deconstructivism are rooted in a movement that urges us to examine the space we move through. Deconstructivist Architects documents explosive and seemingly chaotic structures from Vienna to L.A., and interviews those who pursue its aesthetic issues. Filmed on location with the architects and at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, which was curated by Philip Johnson.
- Meticulously setting up each cinematic shot, Gregory Crewdson has mastered a style of eerie realism intended the make the regular feel foreign. Similar to David Lynch's specific use of the uncanny in films such as "Blue Velvet", Crewdson's work paints a dark, deep portrait of American suburbia. Much like a film director, Crewdson achieves his startling images by working with a professional crew including a director of photography, a camera operator, a production designer, actors and a casting director. His astonishingly elaborate sets create a unique realm of mise-en-scène, inspired largely by the works of American artists and film directors. Gregory Crewdson: The Aesthetics of Repression observes and questions the photographer during his work on ten new images.
- Beginning with their small wrapped objects of 1958, this portrait examines the continuously bold and ambitious artistic ventures of the enigmatic duo, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Though their large scale environmental projects, such as Running Fence and Wrapped Coast, are often met with distress and concern from the surrounding community, perceptions of the project are likely to shift when it comes time to interact with the grand, finished piece. Neither permanent nor purchasable, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works exude the essence of freedom and exists only for the sake of existing.
- An intimate and intellectual lecture given by Hannah Arendt about the work and fate of her friend and colleague in the philosophical field, Walter Benjamin. Delivered in January 1968 at the Goethe House in New York, Arendt's speech paid tribute to Benjamin's ideologies surrounding linguistic philosophy, history and literature. Arendt notes the importance of German-Jewish literature in Benjamin's work, insisting that "without being a poet, he thought poetically. For him the metaphor was the greatest gift of language, because it transforms the invisible into the sensual." (Hannah Ardent) Through his passion for writers such as Kafka, Goethe and Proust, Benjamin honed his own sort of theology revolving around classic texts, preservation, and the collecting of wisdom.
- In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York, Atlanta, and in various European cities. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. The group was joined on the European tour by Ray Copeland, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and Johnny Griffin, traveling as part of George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival road company.
- This installment of The New Modernists looks at nine American-based innovators and their work for housing projects, commercial architecture, private houses and renovations from California to Italy to Japan and beyond. New York architect Billie Tsien, who participates in the film along with her husband and creative partner Tod Williams, states "Making architecture is about the process of making something and the thing, when you are finished, is never perfect, it is always slightly changing, it gets the scratches of the people who move in, fingerprints, it is like life itself, it is not static." (Billie Tsien) The featured architects discuss their methods and efforts towards building on the principles of Modernism while evolving a new language- one drawn from politics, film, literature, theory and the state of the world.
- Documentary portrait of the Philippine filmmaker Lino Brocka.
- 4 Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg acts as a collective portrait of creators linked only by their stated intention of expressing ideas through art. Unconnected to traditional concepts of beauty, storytelling or pictorial representation, the artists discuss the context of their art and how their work and the public's perception of it have changed over time. This film offers the rare opportunity to see a large body of work in their studios.
- Filmed in 1979, "Potsdam: Germany's City of Ghosts" documents the compelling past and present of the East German city. Once residence to the Prussian Kings and later on the German emperors, Potsdam is known for its rich history. After serving as the location for the 1945 Potsdam Conference following the conclusion of WW2, the city went on to house the headquarters for both the Soviet army and the East German military. Narrated by seasoned New York Times correspondent, David Binder, the film allows for a closer look at the prominent city and it's current culture.
- While visiting four architectural practices in 1982, we discuss the postmodernist movement through its meaning and motives. Beyond Utopia: Changing Attitudes in American Architecture features Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman, all of whom are protégés of Philip Johnson. Guided by their mentor, these innovators rejected the European modernism of Mies and Corbusier in search of alternative directions. The architects show and discuss their buildings of the time both in their personal offices and on location.
- A poet among architects and an innovator among educators, John Hejduk converses with poet David Shapiro at The Cooper Union about the mystery and spirit of architecture. His own sketches and structures are shown.
- Narrated by the architect himself, Frank Gehry: The Formative Years explores his long standing career and unique eye. The film looks at a number of Gehry's projects from private homes to complex public institutions, all of which echo his experimental style and vision. Works such as The Norton House, The Aerospace Museum and Loyola Law School demonstrate Gehry's eccentric and distinctive touch. The Formative Years is a survey of his beginnings when Gehry experimented with his own house in Santa Monica, giving him notoriety in the architecture scene.
- While guiding us through her retrospective exhibition "Zaha Hadid Has Arrived", the renowned architect recalls her career from its beginning, discussing her education, inspiration and technique. The exhibition, located at The MAK in Vienna, features a new sculpture from Hadid entitled "Ice Storm" that serves as the centerpiece of the show and captures her sleek signature. From her famed Bergisel Ski Jump to Rome's Museum of Contemporary Art, Hadid's architectural resume shines in its diversity and exploration. A Day with Zaha Hadid reviews Hadid's work of the last decade and celebrates her perpetually modern and daring designs.
- In "Gerhard Richter: 4 Decades" Curator Robert Storr takes us through the artist's 2002 MoMA retrospective room by room, accompanied by the artist himself. The haunting and diverse collection features 188 of Richter's signature blurred photo-realistic paintings. From the political struggles of Western Germany to portraits of loved ones, Richter's body of work evokes a sense of both familiarity and dread. Storr and Richter's discussion of the artist's motivation and vision results in a deeply honest reflection on the retrospective as well as Richter's career as "Europe's greatest modern painter".
- In 1971, in association with West German Television, we produced a documentation on New York's musical avant-garde that was broadcast only in Germany at the time of its release. In 2010, nearly 40 years after the film's original production, it felt desirable to recycle the performances and interviews with the featured composers in order to create a revealing look back to those years for an English-speaking audience. Featuring notable contributors to the musical avant-garde such as John Cage, Philip Glass and Ben Patterson, this portrait explores experimental sound and the rise of electronic composition. "New Music: Sounds and Voices from the Avant-Garde, New York 1971" offers valuable insights into the nature and issues of advanced composition at the beginning of the 1970s.
- In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film with us in which the distinguished German writer, Uwe Johnson, would introduce and question the various characters with whom he exchanges news and opinions during his wanderings on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Uwe, who lived in the area for several years, spent a majority of his free time getting to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. We proposed to him that he participate in the documentary but being essentially introverted, Uwe was not interested in appearing on-camera, but was willing to make a list of places and situations that he felt should be included in the film. Christian Blackwood took charge of the project while Johnson wrote the narration which was added in once the film was edited. "Summer" in the City was broadcast in Germany at the time of its release.
- "Yesterday's Witness: A Tribute to the American Newsreel" is a historic homage to the rise of journalism, media and entertainment news. At the very start of film history the newsreel was a staple of widespread media. Often shown before films in American movie theaters, the short clips would offer the latest reports on World War 2 and the state of the nation. Though these tidbits of information had potential to spur false notions and misinformation, they were some of the firsts ventures into photojournalism and the moving image, industries that continued to grow and improve in decades to come. A collaboration between director Christian Blackwood and his consultant, historian Dr. Raymond Fielding, gives way to a fascinating insight into the lost long medium.
- Set in and around East 77th Street, New Yorkers follows inhabitants of the neighborhood, documenting their small businesses, daily encounters and commentary on New York in the 1970's. With the neighborhood experiencing changes in culture, cost and character we get to know a wide range of residents, each vastly different from the last.
- Katja Mann, wife of German novelist Thomas Mann, recalls their fifty years of marriage and their history both as a couple and independent intellectuals. Born in Germany, the Manns were exiled to the United States during WWII, and returned to Europe after the war, settling in Kilchberg near Zurich. Katja (née Pringsheim) was a witness to all her husband's writing and guarded him from interruptions throughout the years. Thomas Mann's well known literary accomplishments include "Buddenbrooks", "The Magic Mountain", "Death in Venice", "Joseph and His Brothers", and "Doctor Faustus". In this conversation with Elisabeth Plessen, Katja and her son Golo describes their life in vivid detail and reveal the background to many of Mann's important writings. Filmed in Katja's home in Kilchberg in 1969.
- Joan Jonas, a pioneer of video and performance art, started exploring new media in the mid-1960s and quickly became a highly influential and entirely unique visual artist. In 2012 we followed her work on her latest installation and performance, "Reanimation" which she created for the dOCUMENTA(13) art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Inspired by the novel "Under the Glacier" by the Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, Jonas created a video installation piece, mixing footage of a trip to Norway, text, drawings, props, and reanimated videos from her previous work. Pairing her imagery with the music of Jazz pianist, Jason Moran, who Jonas has collaborated with on past projects, the artist creates a unique space of sound and scenery. Throughout the film, the artist also offers insights into her inspirations and her early work including "Wind", "Organic Honey", "Volcano Saga" and "The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things".
- Retracing Steps: American Dance Since Postmodernism takes a closer look at the new wave of dance burgeoning in the late 1980's. While many of the choreographers followed in the film avoid being characterized by a specific movement, the artists share a love for freedom of expression and the avant garde. Rejecting prior notions of dance and structure, daring choreographers such as Blondell Cummings, Bill T. Jones and Diane Martel create a unique performance art, working with sequences that merge sound, image, dialogue and movement. The nine choreographers featured in Retracing Steps eloquently illustrate the eclecticism found in American dance. Made in 1988, Retracing Steps mirrors the best of the New York dance scene.
- "Brice Marden: 4 Decades" follows the renowned abstract artist as he explores his acclaimed 2006 MoMA retrospective with curator Gary Garrels. Applauded for his bold and contemporary style, Marden speaks openly with Garrels about his approach, beginnings and influences. His fluid and colorful works demand attention but welcome the viewer to choose their own path within the painting itself. Marden's career is mapped out through a tour of the exhibition, as he and Garrels discuss key works of the last forty years.
- Built in 1972 by Kisho Kurokawa, the Nakagin Capsule Tower is a rare, long standing example of Metabolist architecture. Known as the first Japanese architectural movement, Metabolism manifested in 1960 through critic Noboru Kawazoe and five architects, Kurokawa being the youngest among them. Together they envisioned a new direction for future Japanese architecture and urbanism, designing plans with large, flexible and expandable structures, the style of which is beautifully demonstrated by the Nakagin Capsule Tower. The building is composed of two concrete core towers which 140 capsules are plugged into, all of which were prefabricated and designed to be removable and replaceable. This portrait, filmed in 2010, gathers context surrounding the tower from its residents as well as Kurokawa's colleagues, friends and family as they debate the current issues with the structure and argue the merits of both preservation and demolition. Tracing the history of postwar Japanese architecture and reviewing the characteristics of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, this documentary examines the meaning of Metabolism and Kurokawa's meticulous methods within the movement.
- Architects Lebbeus Woods and Steven Holl have been friends for many years, brought together by their creativity, philosophy and visionary architectural pursuits. While both are theorists, Woods finds himself preoccupied with bold, speculative designs that push back against notions of time and space, not waiting or searching for any kind of commissions but instead forming his own aesthetical world through the freedom of drawing. This approach stands in direct contrast with Holl's body of work, which consists of many physical buildings both in the United States and abroad. This known order between the two architects has recently been interrupted by Holl commissioning Woods to design a four-story pavilion for his large-scale multi complex Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China. Getting together at Woods' workspace in downtown Manhattan, the longtime friends recall their careers while discussing the current project and their mutual architectural practices.
- Breaking a vow of silence, Ezra Pound reads his Canto I of 1917 to friends at lunch during the Spoleto Festival in 1967. The small group, sitting happily around their table is a gathering that sets the scene for a rare and intimate reading.
- Filmed at the Guggenheim Museum, "Robert Morris: Retrospective" is a detailed and compelling walk through of the artist's exhibition. Joined by renowned art critic and curator Rosalind Krauss, Morris leads the viewer through his work and offers his own feelings and theories behind the avant-garde creations. Through painting, movement, space and sound Morris has built an impressive body of abstract art, most of which calls immediate attention to the society and culture it mirrors. The retrospective exhibition gives brilliant insight into the artist's mindset and the motivation behind his work of the last 4 decades.
- Featuring six young, renowned innovators, The New Modernists: 6 European Architects explores the ideology, method, and influence surrounding modernism. Critic Kenneth Frampton sees this group of architects, working from Seville to Finland, understanding and interacting with the ideas and structures of Aalto, Saarinen and Mies to form a confident new European identity.
- "Hans Bethe: Prophet of Energy" is a portrait of the eminent Nobel Prize winning physicist who greatly advanced our knowledge of the atom. Bethe discusses the milestones of his career: his student work in Germany, his flight from the Nazis, his work on the Los Alamos Atomic Bomb project under Robert Oppenheimer, and his research on the energy production in stars. In working to help solve the energy crisis of the 1970's, Bethe established himself as one of the country's leading spokesmen for a safe way to use nuclear energy. Speaking in support of a sensible use, he represents a side of this controversial issue that deserves more attention. The film provides crucial insight into this complex issue by one of the world's authorities.
- A visit to the studio of Ernst Wilhelm Nay, a remarkable, if somewhat solitary German artist, who established his status at age 30, just before the advent of the Nazi takeover. Nay belonged to the persecuted generation of German artists who, just as their work began to blossom, were forced out by Hitler's art dictatorship. Labeling the art "decadent", the Hitler regime called for the removal of Nay's paintings from museum collections and the artist was banned from showcasing his new work. After the end of World War II, Nay returned to painting and worked tirelessly to make up for lost time, producing new pieces year after year and quickly becoming one of Germany's leading painters. Ernst Wilhelm Nay died in 1968 at the age of 65 yet his studio, still intact, offers a retrospective of his work starting from the 1920s. His wife, Elisabeth Nay walks us through the studio, offering insights into her husband's process and creative intent.