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Eve Babitz, the “dowager groupie” who wrote Slow Days, Fast Company and was known for her relationships with the likes of The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison and Steve Martin, and Joan Didion, the author of Play It As It Lays and The White Album, who wrote Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson’s A Star Is Born, are unquestionably two of Los Angeles’ most-revered writers.

A new book – Didion & Babitz written by Lili Anolik – highlights the relationship between the pair, helped by the author unearthing scores of previously unseen letters.

The book, which published today by Simon & Schuster’s Scribner, also explores their contrasting relationship with Hollywood (the town) and Hollywood (the industry).

Didion wrote a slew of screenplays with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, including the aforementioned A Star Is Born, 1971’s The Panic In Needle Park, which starred Al Pacino, 1981’s True Confessions, which starred Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall,...

Artist Ralph Steadman, whose scratchy, gory, and often hilarious illustrations accompanied gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s best-known work for Rolling Stone, insists that the notion of “content” matters more than “style.” “Style is looking for something and then not taking any notice of the things that you’re supposed to be drawing,” he tells Rolling Stone.

A new exhibition, Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing, at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, D.C. will display seven decades’ of the artist’s signature content. The...

A$AP Rocky is accustomed to photographers capturing his every move but Bottega Veneta is taking it to the next level.

The Italian luxury brand captured the 35-year-old rap and fashion icon in a series of paparazzi-style images for their Pre-Spring 2024 campaign. The “Ready Made” campaign references the term coined by French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp in 1916 to describe prefabricated, often mass-produced objects isolated from their intended use and elevated to the status of art by the artist choosing and designating them as such.

The series of photos shows A$AP “on the go” in everyday life situations – going for a jog, walking a dog, and en route to a birthday party.

Click through the gallery for A$AP‘s brand new Bottega campaign including an exclusive shot of him holding a purple beverage.

Love a clever fashion campaign!

Anna Winger, an American writer, producer and showrunner who has spent more than 20 years, and her entire TV career, in Berlin, specializes in stories that combine a very specific European, usually German, history filtered through very American sensibilities.

Deutschland ’83, and its sequels Deutschland ’86 and Deutschland ’89, which aired on Amazon Prime stateside, told the story of the decline of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall from the perspective of an East German spy, but told in the style of a slick Hollywood thriller.

Similarly, her Emmy-winning Netflix limited series Unorthodox, the story of a woman who flees her life in an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn to find liberation in modern-day Berlin — based on Deborah Feldman’s best-selling memoir — borrows heavily from genre conventions to package a spiritual character study in the guise of more mainstream entertainment.

That combination of European history and U.S. entertainment is also part of Transatlantic,...

The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and indeed, Liu was himself at art college as a young man in the early ’90s, when and where “Art College 1994” is, unsurprisingly, set. The quasi-memoir feel to the movie does have its charm — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied not to extravagant flights of fancy but to slices of real, ordinary life — but it’s also its chief flaw. In re-creating life out of life, Liu is quite successful; whether he makes it into drama is another question. Like its characters, “Art College 1994” gives the impression of having just too much time on its hands.

Liu...

The last time a movie was marketed with a this-sounds-so-wretchedly-over-the-top-not-to-mention-insane-it-could-almost-be-fun low/high concept, the results, to put it kindly, were mixed. “Snakes on a Plane,” which sounded like a title that Don Simpson scrawled in white powder on a table at 4:00 a.m., was a movie that wore its brain-deadness on both lapels. But 17 years ago, that title inspired mountains of online chatter, to the point that the filmmakers incorporated bits and pieces of the obsessive fan gabble into the movie, most famously the Samuel L. Jackson line, “I have had it with these mothefuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin‘ plane!” The result was that “Snakes on a Plane” felt like the first piece of brazen Hollywood schlock that was crowdsourced. The audience went in thinking: It may be trash, but it’s our trash.

Yes, but it was trash. As the taking-off point for a knowingly debased action thriller,...

Every so often, you’ll see a portrait-of-the-artist documentary that’s so beautifully made, about a figure of such unique fascination, whose art is so perfectly showcased by the documentary format, that when it’s over you can’t believe the film hadn’t existed until now. It feels, in its way, essential. “Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV” is like that. Directed by Amanda Kim, it’s a tantalizing portrait of Nam June Paik, the revolutionary Korean-born video artist who, in the late ’60s and ’70s, did nothing less than invent an art form.

When he was first becoming famous, about 50 years ago, you’d go to see a Nam June Paik installation at someplace like the Museum of Modern Art, and it would seem quirky and exotic — a tower of stacked TV screens, all flashing what looked like the squiggly visual equivalent of feedback. It was weird and kind of gripping,...

Since the creation of the camera and the dawn of cinema, film has been one long experiment. Experimental film has often been defined through its rejection of traditional storytelling and structure, its defiance of logic or reason while creating mesmerizing scenes through dreamlike abstraction and subjective narrative.

A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...

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For more than two decades, Jane Fonda has been a supporter and collector of the work of Thornton Dial, a self-taught artist known for his assemblage works incorporating found and repurposed materials. Often called an outsider artist — a term that some admirers feel dismisses Dial’s innate stature as an artist — Dial lived and worked far away from the mainstream of the art world in the city of Bessemer, Alabama. Before he passed away in 2016, Dial had seen his works presented in the Whitney Biennial and in shows at the New Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Now Fonda — who helped publish a two-volume set of books, Souls Grown Deep, in 2000 and 2001 that focused on Dial along with a number of other Southern artists — is selling a collection of 14 artworks including pieces by Dial, his son, Thornton Dial Jr., and brother Arthur Dial.

Chances are, you landed on this review because you’re trying to game your Oscar pool, looking for a clue as to what will win the always-underseen shorts categories — in a year when they were unceremoniously booted from the telecast, no less. Well, if it’s predictions you’re looking for, there’s little contest among this year’s cartoon contenders: Academy favorite Aardman Animations has delivered a delightful frontrunner in “Robin Robin.” But don’t stop reading there! In an unusually adult-leaning year, the traditionally kid-friendly category is well worth watching in its entirety, whether in theaters or on demand, thanks to stalwart distributor ShortsTV.

The program opens with “Robin Robin,” which seems poised to earn Aardman its fifth Oscar. This half-hour Christmas musical was hatched by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, who joined the Bristol-based studio for the express purpose of co-directing this Netflix holiday special, about a...

British post-punk pioneers Bauhaus return with their first new song in over a decade, “Drink the New Wine.”

Recorded during lockdown, Bauhaus used the Surrealists’ “exquisite corpse” method to create the song, with each member coming up with a section without seeing what the other’s had done. The band set up some additional rules: Each member was given only one minute to fill, and only eight tracks to lay down whatever instrumentals and vocals they wanted; the band also allotted themselves a shared 60 seconds to create a composite at the end.

Eve Babitz, a writer and once-and-future “it” girl closely identified with the 1960s and early-’70s in Los Angeles, has died at 78.

Relatives confirmed her death on social media as well as to the Associated Press, but did not specify a cause.

Part-West Coast wild child, part-boho intellectual, Eve once described herself as a “stacked eighteen-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard… who is also a writer.” A famous image from 1963 shows her playing chess against Dadaist artist and writer Marcel Duchamp, with Babitz completely naked and Duchamp fully clothed.

As a writer and creative muse, Babitz had a wide-ranging impact, drawing comparisons to Joan Didion, who recommended a piece of hers to Rolling Stone, kick-starting her writing career. She also ventured outside the world of letters, designing album covers for Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds and Linda Ronstadt. She had romantic connections with notable figures like Jim Morrison of the Doors, Harrison Ford,...

The Animated World is a regular feature spotlighting animation from around the globe. Lewis Klahr's Circumstantial Pleasures is exclusively showing on Mubi starting June 23, 2021 in many countries in the Undiscovered series. Circumstantial Pleasures Collage refuses known systems of meaning, instead sifting through the detritus of cultural production in order to orchestrate accidental insights into human experience. Its heyday was the early 20th century when modernists and surrealists harnessed its power to manifest the unconscious and juxtapose familiar objects into strange new landscapes. Artists like Hannah Hoch, Joseph Cornell, Kurt Schwitters, John Heartfield, and Marcel Duchamp created unique and perplexing works that some found disturbing, or, as famously labeled by the Nazis, degenerate. Their work often unleashed new possibilities, visual puns, erotic undercurrents and hidden political realities. Collage has lost none of its relevance over the years and continues to resonate, with filmmakers joining in as well—especially animators like Larry Jordan,...

Although it has been around for many centuries and was one of the highest arts of ancient Greek scholars, in recent years disciplines such as philosophy have come under attack due to their use for the modern man, or for that matter, the students of today. In his provoking essay “The Usefulness of the Useless” the author Nuccio Ordine, a professor for literature at the University of Calabria, states that especially today it has become increasingly challenging for some to understand the use of a poem, a piece of art, or for that matter, a philosophical argument when compared to the practicality of tools. However, while the point certainly has some value, the “usefulness” (for lack of a better word) in philosophy lies much deeper and cannot be defined directly, since most authors and scholars of the field go into much detail, analyzing hidden meanings and layers below the surface,...

The festival will take place as a physical-online hybrid.

Marjane Satrapi’s Marie Curie biopic Radioactive and Gregory Kirchhoff’s Germany comedy Baumbacher Syndrome will bookend the ninth Majorca International Film Festival (Emiff), which will take place both physically and online from October 23-29.

Radioactive debuted at Toronto 2019, and stars Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley. French-Iranian filmmaker Satrapi was previously announced as the recipient of the festival’s Vision award, while she will also be honoured at the centrepiece gala tribute and screening.

Baumbacher Syndrome stars Tobias Moretti, whose credits include Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, and Elit Iscan,...

Above: All My LifeFollowing the online presentations of the Ann Arbor, Oberhausen, and Images festivals, the San Francisco Cinematheque’s Crossroads festival is the latest experimental film showcase to go virtual in 2020. While the major international festivals take their own tentative steps into the brave new world of digital this month, these modest, more specialized events have already made commendable inroads into the realm of live-streaming and on-demand viewing. What’s at stake in each of these ventures is quite different, and worth outlining: whereas festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival work to combat piracy and appease the demands of sales companies with vested interest in who sees what movies when by limiting press accreditation and geo-blocking films by region, smaller festivals that focus on artists’ cinema have more ideological issues to consider. In this field, concerns over context and materiality take precedence...

After the Mekons released their first album in eight years in 2019, the long-running cowpunk outfit make a quick return with their surprise new LP Exquisite, which the band wrote and recorded while in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The album — “recorded in splendid physical isolation on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets and other ancient technologies in Aptos, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York and Devon in April and May 2020,” the Mekons noted — will arrive exclusively on their Mekorpse Bandcamp on June 19th, or Juneteenth; on that day, Bandcamp...

"He had to find a new way to make art." Electrolift Creative has debuted an official trailer for an art world documentary titled Marcel Duchamp: Art of the Possible (or The Art of the Possible), made by director Matthew Taylor. The film explores the life, philosophy and impact of one of the most influential early 20th century modernists, Marcel Duchamp, originally born in Normandy, France in 1887. The documentary breaks down Duchamp's ideas and applies them to both historical events and the modernist explosion that blanketed the early 20th century. "The Art of the Possible isn't simply a biopic; rather, the film shows how Duchamp's ideas changed the public consciousness, and our understanding of aesthetics, art, and culture. The film highlights the singular impact of Duchamp's philosophy on art, and, more importantly, examines how Duchamp's revolutionary ideas from the early 20th century have shaped the 21st century and modern day." With appearances by Michel Gondry,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired the U.S. rights to the Éric Baudelaire-directed Un Film Dramatique. The film will be released theatrically in the U.S. in 2020.

A refreshing approach to documentary filmmaking, Un Film Dramatique made its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival and went on to the Toronto Film Festival as well as the New York Film Festival this fall. Baudelaire also won the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s biggest art prize.

Commissioned as a dedicated artwork for the newly constructed Dora Maar middle school on the outskirts of Paris, Un Film Dramatique is a portrait that puts a spotlight on the first class to attend the school. Filmed over the course of four years, the group of 21 middle schoolers discuss the drama of their daily lives and experiment with cameras and equipment. The students are not only the film’s subjects but also its makers. The film...

After spending $450 million on four months of renovation and some 47,000 square feet of new gallery space, MoMA reopens October 21 with a radical refashioning of its artwork and curation. The goal is to provide a more diverse and expansive understanding of modernism — and that includes film.

While Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” still greets visitors in the museum’s first gallery, they only have to look to the right for the first cinematic experience, a recording of the New York City subway from 1905. The piece sits at the center of an entire room dedicated to early photography and moving images, including a selection from the Bert Williams 1914 silent work “Lime Kiln Club Field Day,” a Biograph production considered the earliest surviving film with African American actors.

It keeps going. Wandering the galleries two weeks before the opening, much remained unlabeled and unfinished — but movies were almost everywhere, sharing space with the...

Swinging The Lambeth Walk by Len Lye (1939).

In 1939, as Britain waged war with Germany, filmmaker Len Lye stayed in London to work; and visited his pregnant wife Jane and their son Bix, who had evacuated the city to stay at a friend’s farm in Scotland, on the weekends. According to Len Lye: A Biography by Roger Horrocks, Lye was too old (38) and recovering from an appendectomy to fight in the war. Struggling for money, Lye found a financial respite when the British Council for the Travel and Industrial Development Association agreed to sponsor a new film.

“The Lambeth Walk” was a dance that had become popular in England in 1937; and Lye’s visualization of the song links “the drums with bouncing circles, the piano with a sprinkling of coloured dots and rectangles, and the string instruments with vibrating lines,” as noted by Horrocks. The two thumbs-up images that bookend...

Julian (Dominic West) endures the actions of a performer named Oleg (Terry Notary), in Ruben Ostlund’s satire The Square. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures (c).

Ruben Ostlund’s satire The Square was Cannes’ Palme D’Or winner this year but this ambitious film is a decidedly unusual winner. Ostlund’s previous film, Force Majeure, explored a single morally-bad choice in a caustically comic way. The Square turns a satiric eye on modern art, contemporary society, political correctness, homelessness, sex, income inequality and more, although it often focuses on the subject of trust. The Square, partly in English and partly in Swedish with subtitles, is sly, darkly satiric and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny film, when it is not just downright disturbing. This is not a film for everyone, but it has rewards for those up for its wild ride.

The story revolves around Christian (Claes Bang), the curator at a modern art museum in Sweden.

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...

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...

What single person could, when a documentary about their life is made, see as wide a net cast for interview subjects as to include names like art dealer Larry Gagosian and actor Robert De Niro? This person would undoubtedly be at the height of their respective field, and a voice in that field whose repercussions are still being felt to this day. And thankfully, folllowing up her personal 2011 film, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland has found that subject for her newest feature.

Entitled Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, Vreeland tells the tale of the titular art world icon. A child of wealthy immigrant parents, Guggenheim (yes, part of that Guggenheim lineage) inherited a great fortune from her family, only to use it in part to help her float through the greatest artistic movements of the twentieth century. Close friends with and critical champion of legendary...

Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music.   Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...

Above: Franciszek Starowieyski’s 1970 poster for Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson, UK/France, 1966).In Christopher Nolan’s new short film about the Quay Brothers (titled—with Nolan’s predilection for mono-nomenclature—simply Quay) he gives us a clue to some of the twin animators’ influences in the film’s opening shots. After drawing back the curtains in their curiosity shop of a studio, Timothy Quay opens a glass cupboard to remove a book. Blink and you’ll miss it, but on the shelves are books on Marcel Duchamp, Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz, Czech artists Jan Zrzavy, Vlastislav Hofman and Jindrich Heisler, and—most prominently—a book on Polish artist Franciszek Starowieyski.I wrote a few years ago about the Quays’ love of Polish film posters and Franciszek Starowieyski (1930-2009) is one of the indisputable later masters of the Polish school. From the mid 50s until the late 80s he produced some 100 film...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Joseph Kahn is one of the most accomplished and ambitious directors working in the music video and TV commercial industries. To date, he’s also made two feature films, with extremely different results. The first of those pictures, Torque, is almost an art object, the result of a filmmaker who isn’t interested in popcorn spectacle making the most ridiculous motorbike action movie you can imagine. It might well be to The Fast and the Furious what Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain is to a urinal.

And then there’s Detention, a film Kahn made ‘outside of the system.’ It’s a teen time travel horror movie – sort of. It’s also a head-first dive into pop culture ephemera. I’ve seen Detention at least a half dozen times in the last three or four years, and now I’m writing about it, I’m tempted to go get the Blu-ray...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

For almost 30 years, Mark Landis forged artwork and passed it off as his own to various museums around the country. It wasn’t until Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, investigated the pieces in 2008 that the forgery was exposed. Leininger dedicated his time to investigating Landis further, and the scale of forgeries was revealed in 2012. Both men are featured in Art and Craft, a documentary about Landis, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Sam Cullman and co-directed by Mark Becker. Because Landis never sold his work to the museums, only donated the works in what he calls acts of “philanthropy”, he was never prosecuted.

The Hollywood Reporter’s John DeFore said, “The film will appeal to art lovers, but some viewers who can hardly tell their Cezannes from Chagalls will find the story fascinating as well.”

The film was picked by...

November 19, 2014

7:00 p.m.

Anthology Film Archives

2nd Ave. at 2nd St.

New York, NY 10003

Hosted by: New Filmmakers

Another Experiment By Women Film Festival (Axwff), the screening series curated by Lili White, will be hosting their 7th event as part of New Filmmakers at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City.

Filmmaker Rhayne Vermette has two films screening, including her amazingly abrasive abstract found footage piece, Black Rectangle; while Axwff curator Lili White will also be screening her landscape film Turquoise Beads, which compares post-9/11 NYC with New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon.

Also, if you aren’t in the NYC area and cannot make this screening, all films will be available for streaming from November 20 to 29 at the Axw/Online website, which is shaping up into a terrific resource thanks to all the dedication and hard work White has been putting into her Axw project.

The full film...

3 Fates of Mona: Carrie White by Orlando Arocena

The Mona Lisa, properly called La Giaconda, by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most important paintings in the history of art. It is also probably the most parodied painting in the history of art. The most devastating take is L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp, but these horror inspired versions by Orlando Arocena are pretty great in their own right, and very seasonally appropriate. Arocena has repainted the famous merchant’s wife in the guise of three different horror villains. The title 3 Fates of Mona cheekily suggests that there is a killer in all of us, or really, three killers in all of us.

You can pick up prints here, here, and here. They are 17" x 24" hand signed giclee prints. Thanks to Poster Posse for the heads up.

3 Fates of Mona: Jason Voorhees by Orlando Arocena

3 Fates of...

 

With Fantastic Fest taking over the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar for the next week, not nearly as many specialty screenings as usual are going on in town. You will not, however, notice a lack of new releases in area theaters. I'll track those down below, but first I'll take a look at what is going on across town if you aren't engaging with the fest. 

On Tuesday, the Austin Film Society will be screening Antonioni's 1966 mod classic Blow Up at the Marchesa. This special evening includes a 60s themed cocktail hour starting at 6:30 pm, complete with a "complimentary 60s themed hair and nail bar" courtesy of the Aveda Institute. The film will be introduced by Ned Rifkin at 7:30 pm. Bonus: if you show up dressed in your favorite 60s clothes, you may win a prize for the evening.

The Afs Screening Room is the place to be on...

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.

Matthew Weiner has once again shrouded the new season of Mad Men in Soviet-level secrecy, disallowing cast members from saying anything more specific about their roles on the show beyond “I am still on Mad Men” and “Please redact my previous statement.”

But as the show prepares to unveil Season 7A, the veil has lifted ever-so-slightly. Last week, AMC released a preview, which showed Don disembarking from an airplane, very slowly and mournfully. “Jesus, maybe it’s a metaphor!” we all thought. “Or maybe it’s an homage to Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,” some of us thought.

Dakota Group and Submarine Entertainment will produce a documentary about influential art collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim. The film will be directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who directed last year’s look at another cultural icon “Diana Vreeland: the Eye Has to Travel.” Principal photography began in June. The film will look at Guggenheim’s championship of a number of legendary modern artisits such as Marcel Duchamp, Vasil Kandinsky, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock. It will include interviews with some of the men and women who knew her such as journalist Calvin Tomkins, novelist Edmund White, philanthropist Eli Broad,...

Serious artist Justin Bieber, imbued with the flouting of convention that is the hallmark of all serious artists, seriously peed in a mop bucket—a bucket that, in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, Bieber recontextualized as a seriously artistic urinal. The confrontational performance took place earlier this year at a New York restaurant, where it was captured on video by a member of Bieber’s entourage, the Wild Kidz, a group that dares to challenge authoritarian edicts that restrooms are for pissing and mop buckets are for mopping, because they are wild. “You’re not gonna remember him pissin’ in ...

My, those Cinema St. Louis guys are tres occupé! Hot off the heels of their Q-Fest (the St. Louis Gay and Lesbian Film Festival), the Classic French Film Festival starts up this week at the same location. Discover the French culture! The Classic French Film Festival is sponsored by TV5MONDE USA , the French channel in the Us. I’ve never watched it but I’m sure it’s very French!

A downloadable Pdf of the fest’s program can be found Here

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/sites/default/files/downloads/2013/fffest2013_3lores.pdf

The Cinema St. Louis page about the event is Here

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/classic-french-film-festival

All films will be shown in the Winifred Moore Auditorium, Webster University’s Webster Hall, 470 E. Lockwood Ave.

$12 general admission, $10 for students and Cinema St. Louis members, free for Webster U. students

This is the Fifth Annual Classic French Film Festival,...

From Tarantino's raucous new western to a Duchamp tribute at the Barbican, the pianist and composer picks the cultural events catching his eye

Volker Bertelmann, better known as the experimental pianist and composer Hauschka, grew up in Ferndorf, Germany and began learning the piano aged nine. He later wrote pieces for pianos modified by attaching objects to their strings to create otherworldly sound effects. His first album in this vein, Substantial, was released in 2005. His innovative compositions are frequently compared to the work of Eric Satie and John Cage. His Salon Des Amateurs Remixes album is out now.

Festival: Dancing Around Duchamp, The Barbican

A season of events celebrating Marcel Duchamp will be on at the Barbican until June. I love the stories and provocation that you can find within his art. He uses humour in an intriguing way, and it's great to observe how the art world reacted to that.

The Spirit Of '45 & Ken Loach | A Grammar Of Subversion | Flatpack | Reel Iraq

The Spirit of '45 & Ken Loach, Nationwide

Remembering the days when national solidarity meant more than just buying a Keep Calm And Carry On tea towel, Ken Loach's timely new documentary recalls that rose-tinted moment at the end of the second world war when the country was ready to pull together and rebuild bombed-out Britain. Those were the days: universal healthcare, decent public housing, Clement Attlee and the greater good. Couldn't we do with some of that spirit now? No one is better qualified than Loach – something of a national institution himself – to ask. After a special screening this Sunday afternoon at the Ritzy in south London he'll be joined by the comedian Jeremy Hardy and the author of Chavs, Owen Jones, plus interviewees from the film, for a satellite Q&A that will go out...

Tags: American Horror StoryIMDbAmerican Horror Story: Asylum

In keeping with the spirit of Christmas/the seasonal holiday of your choice, I’d like to start off by thanking everyone who is still reading, watching, and commenting. I know we’ve all felt a little traumatized lately, but this episode finally gives us the sweet, sweet revenge we’ve been waiting for. Also, my apologies to anyone who played the “Christmas spirit” drinking game I suggested on twitter. What can I say; this show brings out my dark side.

So when I first heard that this week’s plot involved a “murderous Santa,” I was quick to make with the scoffing. Then I saw Ian McShane’s glower emerge from the depths of a silent night, and vowed never to be naughty again (I feel A Lot of holiday jokes coming on). First McShane kills a Salvation Army Santa, then dons...

Before we start, I have to say that I looooooove me a Christmas horror movie. From Gremlins to Silent Night, Deadly Night to Christmas Evil to Black Christmas to Jaws: The Revenge, I can't get enough of a blood-spattered yuletide. (The only Christmas movie too scary for me? Christmas With the Kranks. [Shudder])

Did American Horror Story: Asylum deliver an advent calendar-worthy Christmas episode? Let's check our list (twice) and find out...

We begin outside a classic small-town department store in the Christmas Story era. But instead of a Red Ranger power bb rifle, Sugar Motta the little boy heading toward the store with his mom wants a coonskin cap. His mom makes him put some money in the bucket of a bell-ringing charity Santa outside the store, and the Santa reassures the kid that all his capitalist holiday-entitlement dreams will surely come true. The store closes up and the lady drags her kid elsewhere,...

The Observer's critics pick the season's highlights, from the Misanthrope to Johnny Marr, Lulu to Lichtenstein, H7steria to Hitchcock. What are you most looking forward to? Add your comments below and download a pdf of the calendar here

December | January | FebruaryDecember

1 Film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (3D)

Well, not so very unexpected. Every move has been tracked by fanboys, from the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Benedict Cumberbatch as the dragon Smaug to the return of the king, Peter Jackson, to take over directing from Guillermo del Toro. But Middle-earth (or, as it's sometimes known, New Zealand) is back for the next three Christmases.

3 Pop Scott Walker

The avant-garde Walker Brother returns with his first album since 2006's The Drift. Not for the faint-hearted, Bish Bosch finds the former romantic hero deep in dystopian territory, at once sonorous and rigorous.

3 Classical H7steria

World premiere of...

On the occasion of Anthology Film Archive's retrospective on Jean Epstein and the publishing of a new anthology on the filmmaker edited by Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, we are here reprinting the essay by Nicole Brenez, "Ultra-Modern: Jean Epstein, or Cinema 'Serving the Forces of Transgression and Revolt.'" The anthology is published by Amsterdam University Press and available in the Us and Canada from the University of Chicago Press. Many thanks to Amsterdam University Press, University of Chicago Press, Magdalena Hernas, Sarah Keller and Nicole Brenez.

Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.

iD Fest, Derby

"Exploring identity through cinema" is about as broad a remit as you can get away with, but any event featuring Brian Blessed, Mike Hodges and Paddy Considine is always welcome. They'll be talking about their careers and looking back on old favourites. There are new films, including a Kent fruit-picking mystery (Strawberry Fields) and a Korean supernatural thriller (Haunters). But the main draw is an eclectic mix of films such as Oss 117: Cairo Nest Of Spies, Rupert Everett zombie movie Dellamorte Dellamore and Bogart noir classic In A Lonely Place.

Quad, Thu to 27 May

Bauhaus Film Season, London

They did everything from pottery to architecture, so it was inevitable the Bauhaus would stray into film-making somewhere along the way. Complementing the Barbican's current exhibition on the German design movement (to 12 Aug), this season brings together Bauhaus-related documentaries and rare abstract, animated and projected experiments by Bauhaus students,...

Here's your daily dose of an indie film in progress; at the end of the week, you'll have the chance to vote for your favorite. In the meantime: Is this a movie you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments. "Every Everything" Tweetable Logline: A rock 'n' roll "Fog of War" about Husker Du's Grant Hart, one of the most influential musicians of the last 30 years. Elevator Pitch: William S. Burroughs, Groucho Marx, Studebakers, rare books, Marcel Duchamp, Freemasons, obscure history, diatribes against chain hotels. Sit down with Grant Hart for even a few minutes and chances are it will be one of the most fascinating conversations you've had in some time. In 1979, Grant co-formed punk band Hüsker Dü and blazed a new sonic trail which gave way to every rock song heard since. "Every Everything" will tell the story of his life: influences, obsessions, loves, passions, art,...

Regina Spektor released a video for "All the Rowboats" from her upcoming album What We Saw From the Cheap Seats yesterday. Just like the singer herself, the video is quirky -- an eclectic medley of seemingly disjointed scenes that somehow work really well together.

The epic pop song is accompanied by a range of visuals including a stop-motion ocean, flashing lights and glitter, and a tied and bound Regina. One portion even features a stalled, layered affect, similar to Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2."

Regina, beautiful as always, has shed her curly locks for Dallas-style big hair and makeup.

Watch below for Regina Spektor's "All the Rowboats:"...

Jason Sperb's new book, Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South, will be out soon from the University of Texas Press.

In other news. "Barbara, a slow-burning drama set in communist East Germany from director Christian Petzold, is the front runner for this year's Lolas, Germany's equivalent of the Oscar, with eight nominations, including best film." Scott Roxborough has more in the Hollywood Reporter; the Süddeutsche Zeitung has the full list. The awards will be presented in Berlin on April 27.

Los Angeles. "Maya Deren's best-known achievement, her remarkable 1943 dream-poem Meshes of the Afternoon, was just the beginning of a too-brief career," writes Tom von Logue Newth in the Weekly. "Her output would extend from experiments in psychodrama, like Meshes and Witch's Cradle, a fascinating, barely edited collaboration with Marcel Duchamp made during Deren's short period in Hollywood; to highly personal dance...

Maurizio Cattelan: All Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Through January 22, 2012

The ironic thing about blasphemy is that, in order for there to be any cathartic meaning for the blasphemer, he must first believe in the subject or object he is debasing. Like, really believe in it. De Sade’s endless accounts of nun rapes and shooting loads into the Eucharist would hold little interest, in their own right, if we were not so intrigued by how devout a believer he truly was. Maurizio Cattelan intrigues us for similar reasons, but to lesser effect. For all his posturing, à la Marcel Duchamp, he constantly returns to themes of a religious nature that belie his crueler intentions. His draped, marble figures suggest both Lazarus and Beuys’s I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). A horse hangs below a hand-lettered sign that reads “Inri” (Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm), a donkey carries a TV set,...

Barbi Reed Arthur Phillips

In his latest book, “The Tragedy of Arthur,” Brooklyn-based author Arthur Phillips mines Shakespeare’s words to consider the roles of originality and authenticity in art. In the novel, protagonist Arthur Phillips is handed a previously unknown play allegedly written by Shakespeare in 1597. The catch? It’s bequeathed to him by his dying father, a con artist who’s spent years in jail.

Adding to the meta layers, the Bard play unearthed in the novel was actually written by Mr.