Cartoon College

Hidden Sex: Art and Shame

2023 · ★ 7.5

The representation of genitalia in the fine arts was censored for centuries: sexual organs were discreetly hidden among fig leaves, pearls or sheets; and it is still a taboo today. From Antiquity to the present day, the history of puritanism applied to art and the tricks used by artists to circumvent censorship.

The Treasures of Saxony: How August III Built His Collection

2021 · ★ 5.3

Year 1763, the Seven Years' War is about to end. August III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, has died, leaving empty the royal treasury and an extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, jewelry and goldsmith masterpieces, which he considered a symbol of his greatness, and that of Dresden, one of the European capitals of Baroque art.

Egon Schiele: Between Love and Hate

2018 · ★ 4.5

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.

Angkor et Les Mystères de L'Empire Khmer

2022 · ★ 7

No synopsis available.

The Cinematograph: Birth of an Art

2021 · ★ 7.2

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.

Ugly Beauty

2010

Documentary in which art critic Waldemar Januszczak argues that beauty is still to be found in modern art, despite several recent books claiming the contrary.

They Are Here

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.

The Art of Grieving

2022

After the untimely death of his 35-year old brother, an artist explores the questions that surfaced from grief by painting 365 paintings and to spur conversation in culture.

Phantasia

2024 · ★ 8

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.

M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity

2018 · ★ 6.9

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.

Lee Miller: A Life on the Frontline

2020 · ★ 7.6

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.

Carceller, the Man Who Died Twice

2021 · ★ 7.5

The life story of Vicente Miguel Carceller (1890-1940), a Spanish editor committed to freedom who, through his weekly magazine La Traca, connected with the common people while maintaining a dangerous pulse with the powerful.