Tag Archive "documentary-film"

Truth or Fiction? Clemens von Wedemeyer at Project Arts Centre, Dublin

The epitath for Clemens von Wedemeyer‘s The Fourth Wall, through Jan. 29, 2011 at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, might be Anthropologist, heed thyself. The three-channel installation, supported by a printed guide, explores story-telling, the search for human origins, the credibility of film, the responsibility of anthropology and our tendency to view the world through expectations honed by legend and desire. The video one sees on entering the gallery, Found Footage, centers on the first contact, in 1971, with the Tasaday, a tribal group in the Mindano rainforest of the Philippines.  The tribe had been living a Stone Age existence in ... More » »

Anita O’Day documentary–jazz at its best

If you don’t know the music of jazz singer/musical genius Anita O’Day, you can fill a big gap in your life by seeing the video Anita O’Day, The Life of a Jazz Singer (got it off of Netflix of course).

Andy Warhol, the movie – the thingness of things

The last scene in Andy Warhol — the first documentary made about the artist after he died in February, 1987 —  is a close-up of Warhol talking while he’s having make-up applied by an assistant, presumably for a tv appearance although it’s not clear.   He’s having a conversation with someone off camera and he’s talking about make-up. Specifically, make-up that’s applied to dead bodies for a funeral.  As he talks, Warhol’s image begins to pixillate, growing more and more abstract as he says things like “Death can make you a star but if the make-up isn’t right, it’s all people ... More » »

The Rape of Europa–a documentary gem

Hitler and Goering look at art. The documentary film The Rape of Europa which I just saw on DVD is a magnificent movie about a sad topic — the Nazi looting of fine art from museums and from Jewish families during WWII.  We’ve all seen Schindler’s List and know something about the looting but this movie shows the extent of the crimes and how the art was stolen — systematically and with grand plans to show it all in personal and state-run Nazi museums.   The thievery went on for 12 years, and while much of the art was restored ... More » »