Cannes film festival
Taylor-Joy makes a fantastic action heroine, facing down a hilariously evil Chris Hemsworth in signature high-speed fights
‘My childhood! My mother! I want them back!” With this howl of anguish, young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone of vengeful rage that runs through George Miller’s immersive, spectacular prequel to his Mad Max reboot from 2015. Once again, there are the crazily colossal and weird convoy-action sequences which fuse the notion of “chase” and “violent combat” into a series of delirious high-velocity contests between motorbikes, 18-wheelers and armed parascenders all attacking and shooting at each other while fanatically zooming in the same direction. The vehicles themselves are what makes the Mad Max movies so very strange. Many films are called “surreal”, but these strange, ritualistic gladiator-vehicle displays in the reddish-brown emptiness really do look like something by Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst.
Furiosa is the origin story of the glamorous,...
Taylor-Joy makes a fantastic action heroine, facing down a hilariously evil Chris Hemsworth in signature high-speed fights
‘My childhood! My mother! I want them back!” With this howl of anguish, young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone of vengeful rage that runs through George Miller’s immersive, spectacular prequel to his Mad Max reboot from 2015. Once again, there are the crazily colossal and weird convoy-action sequences which fuse the notion of “chase” and “violent combat” into a series of delirious high-velocity contests between motorbikes, 18-wheelers and armed parascenders all attacking and shooting at each other while fanatically zooming in the same direction. The vehicles themselves are what makes the Mad Max movies so very strange. Many films are called “surreal”, but these strange, ritualistic gladiator-vehicle displays in the reddish-brown emptiness really do look like something by Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst.
Furiosa is the origin story of the glamorous,...
- 5/15/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Live drip painting artist Mark Rios, known as Mr. Dripping, will be the subject of a new docuseries being produced by Uri Singer’s Passage Pictures.
Spanish-born Rios has gained fame under the moniker of Mr. Dripping for his live drip paintings of stars such as Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Shaquille O’Neil, Antonio Banderas, Benicio del Toro, and Neymar Jr.
The self-taught artist took inspiration from the likes of Max Ernst and Jackson Pollack for unique style which he says liberates him creatively.
The series, directed by Mariano Schoendorff Ares, will follow Mr. Dripping as he travels the world painting and talking to stars.
Taking inspiration from popular series like Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, the show will use Rios’s artistic process as a form of interviewing.
“This is an exciting opportunity for me to connect art and film with Mark,...
Spanish-born Rios has gained fame under the moniker of Mr. Dripping for his live drip paintings of stars such as Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Shaquille O’Neil, Antonio Banderas, Benicio del Toro, and Neymar Jr.
The self-taught artist took inspiration from the likes of Max Ernst and Jackson Pollack for unique style which he says liberates him creatively.
The series, directed by Mariano Schoendorff Ares, will follow Mr. Dripping as he travels the world painting and talking to stars.
Taking inspiration from popular series like Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, the show will use Rios’s artistic process as a form of interviewing.
“This is an exciting opportunity for me to connect art and film with Mark,...
- 5/11/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
This article contains spoilers for Transatlantic.
Netflix’s new period drama Transatlantic tells the story of Journalist Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith), and American expatriate and heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs) who founded the Emergency Rescue Committee (Erc) that helped over 2,000 people flee the Nazis during World War II, without government support.
The series, created by Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, is a fictional representation of true events in which people did whatever was necessary to save those in danger. So how much of Transatlantic is the real story and what did the creators leave out?
The Inspiration Behind Netflix’s Transatlantic
In both the series and real life, Gold and Fry helped prominent European figures such as political philosopher Hannah Arendt, painter Max Ernst and German novelist Heinrich Mann escape to the United States, away from the Nazis persecuting Jews across Europe.
While the real story inspired Transatlantic,...
Netflix’s new period drama Transatlantic tells the story of Journalist Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith), and American expatriate and heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs) who founded the Emergency Rescue Committee (Erc) that helped over 2,000 people flee the Nazis during World War II, without government support.
The series, created by Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, is a fictional representation of true events in which people did whatever was necessary to save those in danger. So how much of Transatlantic is the real story and what did the creators leave out?
The Inspiration Behind Netflix’s Transatlantic
In both the series and real life, Gold and Fry helped prominent European figures such as political philosopher Hannah Arendt, painter Max Ernst and German novelist Heinrich Mann escape to the United States, away from the Nazis persecuting Jews across Europe.
While the real story inspired Transatlantic,...
- 4/7/2023
- by Alec Bojalad
- Den of Geek
It’s always impressive when an artist envisions how their art can expand beyond its initial medium. Take Andrew Jim Gannon, Aka On Man, for example who in creating his debut album sought to create a visual counterpart to the entire project. Gannon has directed three of these videos, with the remaining three directed by Ian Roderick Gray (whose video for Worse Than It Seems was recently featured on Directors Notes). The result is a connecting visual universe which takes the themes explored within the music, in Gannon’s case the themes of trauma and surrealism, and manifests them to create something bigger than any one medium on its own. On our pages today Dn is featuring Gannon’s video for United (Why Can’t We Say Enough), a single-shot psychical horror which features a couple fixed in a never-ending, violent embrace. It’s a great example of just one...
- 7/15/2022
- by James Maitre
- Directors Notes
‘Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery’(‘Beltracchi — Die Kunst der Fälschung’). Wolfgang Beltracchi got away with forging art masterpieces for over 40 years. He may be egotistical and nihilistic, but his genius in undeniable. He managed to fool gallery owners, historians and investors with the stroke of a brush. This documentary follows his last days as a free man.
Join us and our special guest Sunday, February 13, 11:00 am Pst! Director and producer Arne Birkenstock will attend our virtual conversation. There are a lot of topics to discuss and we will receive feedback on first hand. Kino! Film Salon is a monthly online discussion of a German film.
Please RSVP at https://bit.ly/kinorsvpbeltracchi and the Zoom link will be emailed to you 24 hours before the event. Please don’t share this link directly (but do encourage your friends to RSVP!); our capacity is limited and admission will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
For nearly 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art history, theory and painting techniques, he tracked down the gaps in the oeuvres of great artists — Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Heinrich Campendonk, Andre Derain and Max Pechstein, above all — and filled them with his own works. He and his wife Helene would then introduce them to the art world as originals.
What makes these forgeries truly one-of-a-kind is that they are never mere copies of once-existing paintings, but products of Beltracchi’s imagination, works “in the style of” famous early 20th-century artists. With his forgeries, he fooled renowned experts, curators and art dealers. The auctioneers Sotheby’s and Christie’s were hoodwinked, just like Hollywood star Steve Martin and other collectors throughout the world.
Winner of Best Documentary at the German Film Awards.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Watch the trailer here.
1. We watched Run Lola Run and cheered for the protagonist, an enabler of her boyfriend drug dealer. Do you also cheer for Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi?
2. What made this caper so attractive to the audience?
3. Why do you think it won the German Prize for Best Documentary?
4. Why do you think they emphasized Max Ernst and his “genius” so much?
5. What do you think of Helene and their marriage? She mentions how they met and what she heard about his “profession” and we see their dynamic…what else do you think might or might not be mentioned about their marriage. He makes a comment about giving her a life of adventure.
6. Was this a victimless crime?
7. What do you think about Helene’s stating the dealers were happy to have art to sell
8. What do you think of the art dealer’s comment that his clients lost no money because they all benefitted from the forced sale of Beltracchi’s real estate.
9. Do you resonate with the thrill of lying and getting away with it?
10. Was their punishment commensurate with their crime?
11. What do you make of their current life?
12. This was Arne Birkentock’s third doc. He is now on his 13th. What do you think might have attracted Arne Birkenstock to make this doc?
1. 2021-Vienna Calling (Documentary) (producer) (post-production)
2. 2020 — The New Gospel (producer)
3. 2019 - Just Another Day in Paradise (Documentary) (co-producer)
4. 2019 — Sunset Over Mulholland Drive (Documentary) (producer)
5. 2018 — Dreamaway (Documentary) (co-producer)
6. 2018- Mamacita (Documentary) (producer)
7. 2018- Together Forever — Secrets of 50+ Years of Marriage (Documentary) (producer)
8. 2017 — Exodus (Documentary) (associate producer)
9. 2017- The Congo Tribunal (Documentary) (producer)
10. 2014 — Die Moskauer Prozesse (Documentary) (producer)
11. 2014- Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (Documentary) (producer)
12. 2010 — Chandani: The Daughter of the Elephant Whisperer (Documentary) (producer)
13. 2005- 12 Tangos — Adios Buenos Aires (Documentary) (producer)
Kino! Film Salon. Each month we choose a German film or series currently available to stream, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German film.
Our film for February is Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery, directed by Arne Birkenstock.
The Kino! Film Salon will take place on Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 11am — 12pm Pst, 2pm — 3pm Est, 8pm — 9pm Cet.
Host: Sydney Levine consults, interviews and writes about filmmakers and the film industry. She has taught international film business at universities including UCLA, Chapman, The New School of Social Research, and the University of Television and Film Munich, as well as at festivals including the Cannes Producers Workshop, and Berlinale Talents. She created FilmFinders, the film industry’s first database, which was acquired by IMDb. She currently lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. https://blogs.sydneysbuzz.com/
Kino! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film in partnership with the German Film Office.
Genre Crime, Documentary, HistoryGermany, 20141h 33mDirector Arne BirkenstockStarring Wolfgang Beltracchi, Helene Beltracchi
Available on Kanopy, a free streaming service of U.S. public libraries:
Documentaries > Politics & Current Affairs
Documentaries > Art & Artists
Social Sciences > Law & Criminal Justice
The Arts > Visual Art
Social Sciences > Race & Class Studies
Documentaries...
Join us and our special guest Sunday, February 13, 11:00 am Pst! Director and producer Arne Birkenstock will attend our virtual conversation. There are a lot of topics to discuss and we will receive feedback on first hand. Kino! Film Salon is a monthly online discussion of a German film.
Please RSVP at https://bit.ly/kinorsvpbeltracchi and the Zoom link will be emailed to you 24 hours before the event. Please don’t share this link directly (but do encourage your friends to RSVP!); our capacity is limited and admission will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
For nearly 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art history, theory and painting techniques, he tracked down the gaps in the oeuvres of great artists — Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Heinrich Campendonk, Andre Derain and Max Pechstein, above all — and filled them with his own works. He and his wife Helene would then introduce them to the art world as originals.
What makes these forgeries truly one-of-a-kind is that they are never mere copies of once-existing paintings, but products of Beltracchi’s imagination, works “in the style of” famous early 20th-century artists. With his forgeries, he fooled renowned experts, curators and art dealers. The auctioneers Sotheby’s and Christie’s were hoodwinked, just like Hollywood star Steve Martin and other collectors throughout the world.
Winner of Best Documentary at the German Film Awards.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Watch the trailer here.
1. We watched Run Lola Run and cheered for the protagonist, an enabler of her boyfriend drug dealer. Do you also cheer for Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi?
2. What made this caper so attractive to the audience?
3. Why do you think it won the German Prize for Best Documentary?
4. Why do you think they emphasized Max Ernst and his “genius” so much?
5. What do you think of Helene and their marriage? She mentions how they met and what she heard about his “profession” and we see their dynamic…what else do you think might or might not be mentioned about their marriage. He makes a comment about giving her a life of adventure.
6. Was this a victimless crime?
7. What do you think about Helene’s stating the dealers were happy to have art to sell
8. What do you think of the art dealer’s comment that his clients lost no money because they all benefitted from the forced sale of Beltracchi’s real estate.
9. Do you resonate with the thrill of lying and getting away with it?
10. Was their punishment commensurate with their crime?
11. What do you make of their current life?
12. This was Arne Birkentock’s third doc. He is now on his 13th. What do you think might have attracted Arne Birkenstock to make this doc?
1. 2021-Vienna Calling (Documentary) (producer) (post-production)
2. 2020 — The New Gospel (producer)
3. 2019 - Just Another Day in Paradise (Documentary) (co-producer)
4. 2019 — Sunset Over Mulholland Drive (Documentary) (producer)
5. 2018 — Dreamaway (Documentary) (co-producer)
6. 2018- Mamacita (Documentary) (producer)
7. 2018- Together Forever — Secrets of 50+ Years of Marriage (Documentary) (producer)
8. 2017 — Exodus (Documentary) (associate producer)
9. 2017- The Congo Tribunal (Documentary) (producer)
10. 2014 — Die Moskauer Prozesse (Documentary) (producer)
11. 2014- Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (Documentary) (producer)
12. 2010 — Chandani: The Daughter of the Elephant Whisperer (Documentary) (producer)
13. 2005- 12 Tangos — Adios Buenos Aires (Documentary) (producer)
Kino! Film Salon. Each month we choose a German film or series currently available to stream, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German film.
Our film for February is Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery, directed by Arne Birkenstock.
The Kino! Film Salon will take place on Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 11am — 12pm Pst, 2pm — 3pm Est, 8pm — 9pm Cet.
Host: Sydney Levine consults, interviews and writes about filmmakers and the film industry. She has taught international film business at universities including UCLA, Chapman, The New School of Social Research, and the University of Television and Film Munich, as well as at festivals including the Cannes Producers Workshop, and Berlinale Talents. She created FilmFinders, the film industry’s first database, which was acquired by IMDb. She currently lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. https://blogs.sydneysbuzz.com/
Kino! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film in partnership with the German Film Office.
Genre Crime, Documentary, HistoryGermany, 20141h 33mDirector Arne BirkenstockStarring Wolfgang Beltracchi, Helene Beltracchi
Available on Kanopy, a free streaming service of U.S. public libraries:
Documentaries > Politics & Current Affairs
Documentaries > Art & Artists
Social Sciences > Law & Criminal Justice
The Arts > Visual Art
Social Sciences > Race & Class Studies
Documentaries...
- 5/8/2022
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
In the sea (one might say glut) of contemporary animation—a form that, by its very nature, is most often supported by the ever-watchful eye of major studios—breaths of fresh air are desperately needed. Directed by Dash Shaw, with animation direction from Jane Samborski, the sui generis Cryptozoo truly galvanized us at Sundance, our critic calling it “one of the most gorgeous works of American animation in ages.”
You’ll find that quote in the trailer Magnolia have released ahead of Cryptozoo‘s August 20 release. Having not seen the film myself, I’m rather jazzed by what’s here—ever shot offering something new to observe, a gorgeous score to boot. As Juan Barquin said, “With John Carroll Kirby’s haunting and seductive original music still playing in my head long after the credits have rolled, Cryptozoo has embedded itself into my mind. Every fascinating creature has been brought...
You’ll find that quote in the trailer Magnolia have released ahead of Cryptozoo‘s August 20 release. Having not seen the film myself, I’m rather jazzed by what’s here—ever shot offering something new to observe, a gorgeous score to boot. As Juan Barquin said, “With John Carroll Kirby’s haunting and seductive original music still playing in my head long after the credits have rolled, Cryptozoo has embedded itself into my mind. Every fascinating creature has been brought...
- 7/13/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
The current state of American animated cinema is more than a little disappointing; Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, and more regurgitate the same formula and offer nothing new but a juxtaposition of cartoon designs and hyper-realistic imagery; animation for adults is all too rare. When something like Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski’s Cryptozoo comes along, it’s easy to recognize as one of the most gorgeous works of American animation in ages.
There is a willingness to experiment with animation and layers that is present from the very first frames of Cryptozoo that makes it immediately captivating. One simply watches two hippies roaming through the forest, engaging in their erotic and philosophical musings, without the realization that something so small and dark and intimate will explode into a psychedelic adventure that asks an important question: can humans and cryptids ever truly co-exist in peace?
As amusing as the notion of potentially...
There is a willingness to experiment with animation and layers that is present from the very first frames of Cryptozoo that makes it immediately captivating. One simply watches two hippies roaming through the forest, engaging in their erotic and philosophical musings, without the realization that something so small and dark and intimate will explode into a psychedelic adventure that asks an important question: can humans and cryptids ever truly co-exist in peace?
As amusing as the notion of potentially...
- 1/29/2021
- by Juan Barquin
- The Film Stage
Takashi Makino (b. 1978 ) is a Tokyo-based experimental filmmaker widely considered to be one of the most influential Japanese moving-image artists of his generation. After graduating from the cinema department at Nihon University College of Art, he spent time honing his skills in the London-based studio of the Quay Brothers before moving back to Japan. His unique working process usually involves capturing representational footage of humans, nature, and urban life in various formats and then transforming these images radically during the editing stage. Through a process of layering, superimposition and other formal manipulations, these concrete images blend together into pulsating visual fields of organic abstraction in his finished works.
Makino regularly presents installations, screenings, and audio-visual performances of his work internationally, having appeared in over 120 cities to date. Recent engagements include: documenta 14, Athens, Greece (2017); Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria (2017); New York Film Festival, New York, USA; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); The Korean Film Archive,...
Makino regularly presents installations, screenings, and audio-visual performances of his work internationally, having appeared in over 120 cities to date. Recent engagements include: documenta 14, Athens, Greece (2017); Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria (2017); New York Film Festival, New York, USA; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); The Korean Film Archive,...
- 6/25/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The German producer/director team behind Adventures Of A Mathematician are behind the project.
Lena Vurma and Thorsten Klein, the German producer/director team behind Adventures Of A Mathematician, which is being sold by Indie Sales in the Cannes market. are hatching a new biopic based on the extraordinary life of English surrealist, Leonora Carrington who died in 2011.
The as yet untitled project has received development backing from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and is based on Leonora, the biographical novel by Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska.
Born as the heiress to a British textiles fortune in 1917, Carrington rebelled against her background, had an...
Lena Vurma and Thorsten Klein, the German producer/director team behind Adventures Of A Mathematician, which is being sold by Indie Sales in the Cannes market. are hatching a new biopic based on the extraordinary life of English surrealist, Leonora Carrington who died in 2011.
The as yet untitled project has received development backing from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and is based on Leonora, the biographical novel by Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska.
Born as the heiress to a British textiles fortune in 1917, Carrington rebelled against her background, had an...
- 5/16/2019
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
It's that time of year again: the Frigid NY Festival is taking over the Kraine Theater and Under St. Marks for 19 days, with 30 plays ranging from personal narratives to parodies to science comedy to the avant-garde. We will be discussing a mere four of the productions in our two dispatches from the festival, but information and tickets for all of this year's shows can be found at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info. As every year, all proceeds from tickets sales go directly to the artists.
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
- 2/22/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Ryan Lambie Dec 20, 2018
It's always a good time to look back at the utter strangeness of Transformers: The Movie.
The following contains spoilers for Transformers: The Movie. Just thought we should mention it.
The shadow of death hung like a black curtain over Transformers: The Movie. Thanks to an edict handed down by the powers that be at Hasbro, pretty much every toy in the original Transformers 1984 line was wiped out in the course of the film's events; and by the time the noble Autobot leader Optimus Prime died at the hands of Megatron towards the end of the first act, a generation of youngsters were scarred for life.
In retrospect, Hasbro's cold business decision - to wipe out one generation of toys in order to replace them with new ones - resulted in a far more effective movie. As well as a feature-length toy commercial, Transformers: The Movie wound...
It's always a good time to look back at the utter strangeness of Transformers: The Movie.
The following contains spoilers for Transformers: The Movie. Just thought we should mention it.
The shadow of death hung like a black curtain over Transformers: The Movie. Thanks to an edict handed down by the powers that be at Hasbro, pretty much every toy in the original Transformers 1984 line was wiped out in the course of the film's events; and by the time the noble Autobot leader Optimus Prime died at the hands of Megatron towards the end of the first act, a generation of youngsters were scarred for life.
In retrospect, Hasbro's cold business decision - to wipe out one generation of toys in order to replace them with new ones - resulted in a far more effective movie. As well as a feature-length toy commercial, Transformers: The Movie wound...
- 11/30/2016
- Den of Geek
Cad, bounder, dastard... look those words up in an old casting directory and you'll probably find a picture of George Sanders. Albert Lewin's best movie is a class-act period piece with terrific acting from Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Ann Dvorak, John Carradine, Warren William and many more, and a powerful '40s picture that most people haven't discovered, now handsomely restored. The Private Affairs of Bel Ami Blu-ray Olive Films 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 112 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95 Starring George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Ann Dvorak, John Carradine, Warren William, Susan Douglas, Albert Bassermann, Frances Dee, Marie Wilson, Katherine Emery, Richard Fraser. Cinematography Russell Metty Film Editor Joseph Albrecht Original Music Darius Milhaud Assistant Director Robert Aldrich Production Design Gordon Wiles Written by from the novel by Guy de Maupassant Produced by David L. Loew Written Directed by Albert Lewin
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...
- 5/14/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The socialite collector’s eventful life – star-studded by the greatest artists of the 20th century – is told by art critics, historians and Guggenheim herself
The career of socialite, collector, patron and salonnière Peggy Guggenheim must be the most mind-bogglingly eventful in the history of 20th-century art. Lisa Vreeland’s documentary does full justice to it, interviewing art critics and historians and rattling through her star-studded life story – the term “name dropping” hardly covers it – using some fascinating audio interviews with Guggenheim herself, who with authentically patrician understatement casually alludes to her acquaintance with some of the biggest names in art. The wealthy daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim (who went down with the Titanic) and niece of Solomon Guggenheim (founder of the famous New York museum), Peggy became a passionate collector of art and artists; she founded galleries in London, New York and finally Venice where her museum still stands. The origin...
The career of socialite, collector, patron and salonnière Peggy Guggenheim must be the most mind-bogglingly eventful in the history of 20th-century art. Lisa Vreeland’s documentary does full justice to it, interviewing art critics and historians and rattling through her star-studded life story – the term “name dropping” hardly covers it – using some fascinating audio interviews with Guggenheim herself, who with authentically patrician understatement casually alludes to her acquaintance with some of the biggest names in art. The wealthy daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim (who went down with the Titanic) and niece of Solomon Guggenheim (founder of the famous New York museum), Peggy became a passionate collector of art and artists; she founded galleries in London, New York and finally Venice where her museum still stands. The origin...
- 12/10/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
- 11/18/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The Austin Film Society has teamed up with Dan Halstead of Portland's Kung Fu Theater to host the 2nd annual "Old School Kung Fu Weekend" at the Marchesa. Three films will screen tonight and three more tomorrow, all directly from rare 35mm prints. The lineup is top secret and most of the movies have never before played in town. Passes are available for the entire series or individual tickets will be sold at the door, capacity permitting.
The Afs Screening Room hosts an Avant Cinema screening on Wednesday night of the 1947 film Dreams That Money Can Buy, created by avant-garde masters Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder and John Cage. Thursday night's Essential Cinema selection is Abel Gance's J'Accuse. Presented in a Dcp of a recent restoration, this 1919 silent classic presents a love triangle between a soldier, his wife and her lover during World War I.
The Afs Screening Room hosts an Avant Cinema screening on Wednesday night of the 1947 film Dreams That Money Can Buy, created by avant-garde masters Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder and John Cage. Thursday night's Essential Cinema selection is Abel Gance's J'Accuse. Presented in a Dcp of a recent restoration, this 1919 silent classic presents a love triangle between a soldier, his wife and her lover during World War I.
- 6/20/2014
- by Matt Shiverdecker
- Slackerwood
It is one of Beckett's most famous – and most startling – images. But what inspired the half-buried woman in Happy Days? His friend and biographer James Knowlson tracks down the first Winnies
Samuel Beckett was a passionate lover of art and a friend of many painters and sculptors. He loved Dutch and Flemish painting in particular – and art almost certainly inspired some of his most memorable theatrical images. Even his earliest plays, such as Waiting for Godot or Endgame, recall the old masters: the character Lucky in Godot may well remind you of a Brueghel grotesque; Estragon and Vladimir's physical antics echo scenes in Adriaen Brouwer's paintings ("Dear, dear Brouwer", Beckett called him); Hamm in Endgame appears to share genes with some portraits by Rembrandt, staring out at the viewer – Jacob Trip in his armchair, perhaps.
As for Beckett's late miniature works – recently revived by the Royal Court with a tour...
Samuel Beckett was a passionate lover of art and a friend of many painters and sculptors. He loved Dutch and Flemish painting in particular – and art almost certainly inspired some of his most memorable theatrical images. Even his earliest plays, such as Waiting for Godot or Endgame, recall the old masters: the character Lucky in Godot may well remind you of a Brueghel grotesque; Estragon and Vladimir's physical antics echo scenes in Adriaen Brouwer's paintings ("Dear, dear Brouwer", Beckett called him); Hamm in Endgame appears to share genes with some portraits by Rembrandt, staring out at the viewer – Jacob Trip in his armchair, perhaps.
As for Beckett's late miniature works – recently revived by the Royal Court with a tour...
- 1/22/2014
- The Guardian - Film News
Ever fascinated by the American way of life, Lynch’s career is rooted in the American experience, be it small town life or the magical land of Hollywood. The contradiction of the sense of community, magic and folksiness with the underbelly of violence and perversion is at the heart of most of his projects. He explores this dichotomy through the subjectivity of his character’s mind, examining the dissolve between reality and nightmare. How this particular effect transforms space through juxtaposition, displacement and artificiality are essential to his style. Surrealism plays an important role in all of Lynch’s work.
Borne out of a legacy of fantasy art, Freudian psychology and Dada, an anti-art movement, Surrealism has no consistent style. It is often described as artwork produced by drawing on the subconscious. However, it is different from art that is merely fantastic as surrealists made a sincere attempt to create...
Borne out of a legacy of fantasy art, Freudian psychology and Dada, an anti-art movement, Surrealism has no consistent style. It is often described as artwork produced by drawing on the subconscious. However, it is different from art that is merely fantastic as surrealists made a sincere attempt to create...
- 3/10/2013
- by Justine
- SoundOnSight
New York. In Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good), a show at the Public Theater through Sunday, the German/British collective Gob Squad reconstructs a batch of films by Andy Warhol, in particular, of course, Kitchen (1965). Amy Taubin files a terrific report at Artforum, recalling an early-ish assessment of the film by Norman Mailer and noting "the Warhol/Godard connection." At the outset of the performance, the audience is taken on a tour of the set and told "that the black-and-white video projections which comprise almost the entire performance (and which resemble the texture and tonalities of Warhol's black-and-white 16mm films) are a simulcast of the performance taking place in the colorful, three-dimensional space behind the screens — and not a prerecorded video. The strategy works. Paradoxically, the video, which is larger than life but also ghostly, is more convincing than seeing flesh-and-blood performers moving around a...
- 2/2/2012
- MUBI
L'Age D'Or
DVD & Blu-ray, BFI
Spanish director Luis Buñuel's importance in the world of film-making is often overlooked, perhaps because he wasn't part of any handy film movement such as New Wave or neo-realism.
But he was part of an artistic movement, hanging out with surrealists such as Man Ray and Max Ernst. Oddly, this has left him between two stools: too artistic for cinema, too cinematic to be considered true art. This release contains two groundbreaking films Buñuel made some 80 years ago in collaboration with Salvador Dalí.
Their first, the notorious Un Chien Andalou, included here as an extra, has inspired everyone from David Lynch to David Bowie and Pixies. It's rich in imagery, from ants crawling out of a hand and rotting animals stuffed in pianos to the famous shot of a razor blade bisecting an eye. With sequences drawn from dreams rather than conscious imagination, the...
DVD & Blu-ray, BFI
Spanish director Luis Buñuel's importance in the world of film-making is often overlooked, perhaps because he wasn't part of any handy film movement such as New Wave or neo-realism.
But he was part of an artistic movement, hanging out with surrealists such as Man Ray and Max Ernst. Oddly, this has left him between two stools: too artistic for cinema, too cinematic to be considered true art. This release contains two groundbreaking films Buñuel made some 80 years ago in collaboration with Salvador Dalí.
Their first, the notorious Un Chien Andalou, included here as an extra, has inspired everyone from David Lynch to David Bowie and Pixies. It's rich in imagery, from ants crawling out of a hand and rotting animals stuffed in pianos to the famous shot of a razor blade bisecting an eye. With sequences drawn from dreams rather than conscious imagination, the...
- 5/27/2011
- by Phelim O'Neill, Richard Vine
- The Guardian - Film News
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