The Bowman Arts Centre is pleased to present a new film series, Brush Marks, that presents documentaries on recent and contemporary painters. These films include award winners, independently produced features and rare European releases. The films examine the motivations of the subjects, provide contexts for their work, and will be of interest to both artists and the general public. As well, the films highlight the possibilities of paint, and provide an exhaustive exploration through the landscape of recent painting practices.

LIST OF FILMS:

To The Studio: Frank Auerbach
Jake Auerbach Films, 2001, 55 Min.

This film offers an exclusive invitation to the secret world of Frank Auerbach. The painter rarely leaves his studio: he works 364 days a year, from sun-up to sun-down in a furious race against time. There is not a minute to waste. His main links with the outside world are the models who've sat for him for between ten and forty-two years. They are from diverse backgrounds: acting, academia, filmmaking and business. They talk with insight about being painted and about the man behind the canvas. Auerbach is filmed in his studio, sketching in the National Gallery and around Camden town, talking about his sitters, his routine, his compulsions, strange rituals, his ambitions and his heroes.

February 23, 7pm - 8pm

Philip Guston: A Life Lived
Michael Blackwood Prod. 1982, 58 min.

Narrated by the artist. Late in life, the artist looks back over a career that originated in social realism during the '30s, moved to the center of Abstract Expressionism, and culminated in a return to figuration. Filmed at his retrospective in San Francisco in 1980 and at his Woodstock studio, where Guston is seen painting, the artist speaks candidly about his philosophy of painting and the psychological motivation for his work.

March 2, 7pm - 8pm

Gerhard Richter: 4 Decades
Michael Blackwood Prod. 2002, 58 min.

Gerhard Richter's career as a painter began after his departure from East Germany in 1961. He is now considered "Europe's greatest modern painter".

In 2002 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the first major retrospective of his work in the U.S. Curator Robert Storr and the artist selected 188 paintings for the show. Before the opening they visit the exhibition and discuss this remarkable body of work. The ensuing dialogue reveals Richter's motivations, approach and personality

March 9, 7pm - 8pm

Lucian Freud: Portraits
Jake Auerbach Films, 2005, 60 min

Unprecedented, intimate and revealing, this film weaves interviews with a large selection of work by one of the great artists of our century. Lucian Freud, now in his 80s, has always been at pains to preserve his privacy. In recent years, as his fame has increased and his eminence as a painter has matured into pre-eminence, the artist has become the object of endless and generally inaccurate press interest. Lucian Freud ‘Portraits’ is an analysis of the artist as seen through the eyes of those who have been best placed to study him - his sitters. Over a period of two years, film-maker Jake Auerbach and Freud’s biographer William Feaver filmed many of Freud’s subjects, ranging from the late Duke of Devonshire and the now Dowager Duchess of Devonshire to fellow painters David Hockney and Celia Paul; from friends such as Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles to ex-lovers, daughters and grand-daughters. What the critics are saying: “A beautiful and telling film but disturbing too” The Guardian, “a striking study of the ruthlessness of talent” The Independent, “mesmerising” The Times, “intimate… and somewhat chilling” Daily Telegraph.

March 23, 7pm - 8pm

Drawing Out the Demons: Attila Richard Lukacs
David Vaisbord, 2004, 78 min.

Gifted artist, tormented soul, egomaniacal bad-boy hyped up on crystal-meth. This is the snapshot, circa summer 2001, as this raw and uncensored documentary begins tracking the dramatic career of Canadian-born painter Attila Richard Lukacs. A bold visionary whose life-size homoerotic renderings of skinheads fetch tens of thousands of dollars, Lukacs fails in his attempt to crack New York City and the world’s toughest art scene. He spirals into depression and drug addiction, alienates friends and arts associates, and pushes away his saintly parents. But the wired West Coast artist manages to make it to the other side, retreating from his disastrous NYC exploits to find detox, redemption, and creative renaissance in Maui.

A gritty and compulsive examination of the extremes of artistic temperament, the story is set against the backdrop of Lukacs' school days at Vancouver's Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and his meteoric rise into the international art world. His paintings—once the toast of Berlin and Toronto—shift and change in tone and execution, revealing an artist of uncanny ability and endurance.

March 30, 7pm - 8:30pm

Georg Baselitz
Michael Blackwood Prod. 2007, 58 min.

A documentary on controversial German painter Georg Baselitz, who once referred to German painting traditions as 'ugly,' provoked censors with the sexual content of his postmodern works, and became famous for a series of upside-down paintings.In the fall of 2007, a brilliant retrospective exhibition of the work of Georg Baselitz opened at London's Royal Academy of Arts. It was curated by Norman Rosenthal, who had first exhibited paintings by Baselitz in the early 1970's. Baselitz traveled to London to lecture at the Academy and revisits his exhibition together with Rosenthal. They discuss the work, paintings and sculptures, and the artist's beginnings and progress.

April 6, 7pm - 8pm

I. Immendorff
Nicola Graef, 2008, 88 min.

Jeorg Immendorff, who ranks among the most important of contemporary German artists, died in 2007 after a 9-year-long struggle with ALS, or Lou Gehrigs Desease. This documentaryrecords his final two years as he continues, despite being lamed by the disease, to create large-scale masterpieces through assistants. During this time he also remains professor at Dsseldorf Art Academy, where he had been a student of Joseph Beuys decades earlier. Interviews with the people who knew him best provide background and historical context to his artistic expression that spans personal and political topics through performance, paintings, and sculpture. Filmmaker Graef aims to both convey the man and the legend for which life and art were inseparable.

April 20, 7pm - 9pm

Miss Intrepreted: Marlene Dumas
Rudolf Everhuis, 1997, 62 min.

Born in Cape Town South Africa, Marlene Dumas is one of the best-known contemporary artists in the world. In her paintings, usually life-sized, she depicts human figures that wrestle with emotions. The documentary film ‘Miss Interpreted’ follows the artist’s activities for a period of six months while she prepares for an exhibition, thus giving us intimate insights into her work and ideas. Included are archive material from her youth, texts of Marlene, her paintings and drawings, and video archive material .

April 27, 7pm - 8pm

Bacon's Arena: An Art of Pain and Beauty
Adam Low, 2005.  96 min.

Despite the carnage and horror in his paintings, Francis Bacon insisted that beauty was his inspiration. This program explores Bacon’s life and work, from his troubled Edwardian childhood to his death in Madrid in 1992. Using rarely seen archival films and images, as well as interviews with friends and relatives of the painter, the film depicts Bacon’s influences, far-flung travels, chaotic relationships, and most of all his torturous, spellbinding pictures. Viewers will encounter Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, other triptychs, Figure in a Landscape, several pope paintings, and more. Bonus materials (DVD only) include an interview with the film’s director, short features on Bacon’s studio and photographic influences, and a conversation between Bacon and renowned art critic David Sylvester.

May 4, 7pm - 8:30pm

The Cats of Mirikitani
Linda Hattendorf, 2006, 74 min.

Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing powers of friendship and art, this documentary won the Audience Award at its premiere in the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

May 11, 7pm - 8:30

A New Spirit in Painting: Six Painters of the 1980's
Michael Blackwood Prod. 1982, 58 min.

Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz. Narration by Donald Kuspit.

Critic Donald Kuspit sees the possibilities of modern art revitalized in the powerful expressive painting of this international group of artists. From an immense reservoir of choices, they have recovered myth, history, symbols and eroticism to use as subject matter, and have recharged the painterly gestures of previous generations with new intensity.

June 1, 7pm - 9pm