Quest for Beauty: The Life and Art of William Schickel
2025 · 43m · Documentary
Quest for Beauty is a film documentary on the life and prolific art career of William Schickel who was a prominent 20th century Catholic artist. Schickel had a very prolific art career spanning sixty-plus years; he produced a large body of mostly commissioned work in painting, sculpture, stained glass, and architectural design. He is most well-known for his renovation of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he worked personally with Thomas Merton. His works can be found in numerous private collections and museums, including the Vatican Museum. The film explores his Quest for Beauty and the challenges he faced, and his vision for the Church and his heart for unity in the Body of Christ.
More Like This
Black Pénélope
1991
A discovery of the pictorial art that Ndebele women traditionally practice in South Africa: painting the walls of their houses.
More info →
Kaarel Kurismaa. The Limits of Timelessness
2024
A documentary about the Estonian artist Kaarel Kurismaa shows the viewer an insight into the world of artists. Kaarel changed his creative direction several times; he explored different artistic styles. Kaarel Kurismaa laid the foundations for Estonian kinetic and sound art. He is a highly versatile artist whose creative energy is divided between painting, sound, installation, monumental art, and film. On the crest of the avant-garde wave of the 1970s, he created several important sound and kinetic objects in Estonian art history.
More info →
Midsummer Rock: The Cincinnati Pop Festival 1970
1970 · ★ 7
Midsummer Rock is a television program based on the Cincinnati Pop Festival. The 90-minute TV version featured Alice Cooper, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, The Stooges, and Traffic.
More info →
The Lost Portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Culture Show Special
2014
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.
More info →
Blow Ups: Borowczyk's Works on Paper
2014 · ★ 5
A visual essay about Walerian Borowczyk's works on paper.
More info →
Seedbed
1972
“In this legendary sculpture/performance Acconci lay beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, "You're pushing your cunt down on my mouth" or "You're ramming your cock down into my ass." Not only does the architectural intervention presage much of his subsequent work, but all of Acconci's fixations converge in this, the spiritual sphincter of his art. In Seedbed Acconci is the producer and the receiver of the work's pleasure. He is simultaneously public and private, making marks yet leaving little behind, and demonstrating ultra-awareness of his viewer while being in a semi-trance state.” – Jerry Saltz (via: http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_seedbed.html)
More info →
Konrad Mägi
2019
A documentary made for Konrad Mägi exhibition "The Light of the North" in Torino, Musei Reali (2019-2020), about Mägi's life and his legacy.
More info →
Beautiful Thing: A Passion for Porcelain
2013
Documentary in which Ros Savill, former director and curator at the Wallace Collection, tells the story of some incredible and misunderstood objects - the opulent, intricate, gold-crested and often much-maligned Sevres porcelain of the 18th century. Ros brings us up close to a personal choice of Sevres masterpieces in the Wallace Collection, viewing them in intricate and intimate detail. She engages us with the beauty and brilliance in the designs, revelling in what is now often viewed as unfashionably pretty or ostentatious. These objects represent the unbelievable skills of 18th-century France, as well as the desires and demands of an autocratic regime that was heading for revolution.
More info →
Cecil Taylor: All The Notes
2005
Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.
More info →
Someone's Junk is Someone else's Treasure
2011
Contemporary artist Koki Tanaka sets up a booth at a Los Angeles flea market to sell palm fronds. "I tried to bring something very extreme into the flea-market context. I picked the palm fronds because they are the most useless things in California – they’re what we have to sweep away after a windy day. It was an experiment in registering people’s reaction to a fundamental question about the value of objects. And I was referencing two historical pieces: David Hammons’s Bliz-aard Ball Sale [1983], where he sold snowballs during winter in New York; and a Japanese manga called Munou no Hito [A Worthless Person, 1985], in which the protagonist sells stones by the riverside – stones being sold alongside stones. So both shared quite similar ideas." - Koki Tanaka
More info →