Art With a Message: Protest, Propaganda, Satire and Social Comment

Quando A Noite É Vermelha(pt)

May 2, 2024. Amidst big names from São Paulo's drag scene, a young filmmaker dives into the experience of becoming a drag queen for one night.

Cut Piece(en)

Filmed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cut Piece documents one of Yoko Ono’s most powerful conceptual pieces. Performed by the artist herself, Ono sits motionless on the stage after inviting the audience to come up and cut away her clothing in a denouement of the reciprocity between victim and assailant.

Maria: Don't Forget I Come From the Tropics(pt)

An examination of the relationship between the life and art of Maria Martins, now recognized as one of the greatest Brazilian sculptors, in addition to her engravings and texts. The film reveals the greatness of her work and her boldness when dealing directly with the feminine perspective of sexuality, a transgression that led to attacks by Brazilian critics. In parallel, her life as the wife of an important diplomat and her connection to Marcel Duchamp, in a relationship of mutual collaboration between the two artists.

Yayoi Kusama(en)

Yayoi Kusama born March 22, 1929 is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, scat sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Yoko Ono.

Yayoi Kusama: I Love Me(ja)

Captures the avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusamas creative process as she diligently works to complete her series of 50 large monochrome drawings. As her work comes to life, one can witness the essence of her art as it wells up in the conflict between life, death, and love.

The Price of Everything(en)

Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, including market darlings George Condo, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, this documentary examines the role of art and artistic passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society.

Our New President(en)

The story of Donald Trump's election told entirely through Russian propaganda. By turns horrifying and hilarious, the film is a satirical portrait of Russian meddling in the 2016 election that reveals an empire of fake news and the tactics of modern day information warfare.

Earth Hum(en)

“Earth Hum” is dedicated to Rachel Martin’s Family Tree, a drawing that combines art, earth, and love all into one. In a conversation with Martin, we learn a little bit more about her art told through her own voice and drawings as well as the ethereal presence of friends and old Super 8 footage. Like Martin says, in art, you see that there are magical things happening but it is really very human.

The Big Wheel(en)

During the 1980 exhibition of Burden's monumental kinetic sculpture The Big Wheel at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Burden and Feldman were interviewed by art critic Willoughby Sharp. Burden articulates the process of creating The Big Wheel, a 6,000-pound, spinning cast-iron flywheel that is initially powered by a motorcycle, and discusses its relation to his earlier performance pieces and sculptural works. Addressing his motivations and the meaning of this potentially dangerous mechanical art object, Burden discusses such topics as the role of the artist in the industrial world, "personal insanity and mass insanity," and "man's propensity towards violence."

Democracy Is ...(en)

The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?

Screen Test: Marisol(en)

Marisol has been posed against a light-coloured background and carefully lit from left and right. Her face emerges from the dark mass of her hair. The film is slightly out of focus throughout. At one point she glances off-screen, then resumes her gaze into the camera.

Bob Indiana, Etc.(en)

Robert Indiana with a few companions sitting, smiling, and smoking as life passes idly by.

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté(fr)

Frantz Fanon alone embodies all the issues of French colonial history. Martinican resistance fighter, he enlisted, like millions of colonial soldiers, in the Free Army out of loyalty to France and the idea of freedom that it embodies for him. A writer, he participated in the bubbling life of Saint-Germain with Césaire, Senghor and Sartre, debating tirelessly on the destiny of colonized peoples. As a doctor, he revolutionized the practice of psychiatry, seeking in the relations of domination of colonial societies the foundations of the pathologies of his patients in Blida. Activist, he brings together through his action and his history of him, the anger of peoples crushed by centuries of colonial oppression. But beyond this exceptional journey which makes sensitive the permanence of French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles at the gates of the Algerian desert, he leaves an incomparable body of work which has made him today one of the most studied French authors across the Atlantic.

'Orsay(pt)

Segantini: Back to Nature(it)

Giovanni Segantini rose from humble origins to become the most important of Italian pointillists, and one of the most important symbolist painters in the 19th century. This film focuses on his way of feeling nature as a source of artistic and spiritual inspiration.

Sa Ngalan ng Tubo(en)

A documentary on the struggle of millworkers, farmworkers, and people of Hacienda Luisita, Philippines.

Poverty, Inc.(en)

Poverty, Inc. explores the hidden side of doing good. From disaster relief to TOMs Shoes, from adoptions to agricultural subsidies, Poverty, Inc. follows the butterfly effect of our most well-intentioned efforts and pulls back the curtain on the poverty industrial complex - the multi-billion dollar market of NGOs, multilateral agencies, and for-profit aid contractors. Are we catalyzing development or are we propagating a system in which the poor stay poor while the rich get hipper?

Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice(en)

A monument handcrafted by Konstantin Bessmertny is exhibited at Venice Biennale 2007.

Has Capitalism Killed the American Dream?(en)

"Jacobin founding editor, Socialist Manifesto author, and former co-chair of the Democratic Socialists for America Bhaskar Sunkara squares off with Libertarian Nick Gillespie, editor at large of Reason and host of the podcast, The Reason Interview, to determine whether capitalism is the best economic system for the country, or are we in dire need of revamp. Michael Moynihan Moderates" (Vice News).

Greenfingers(en)

Following fateful scientific reports, protestors pose the argument for a better future against the vested interest of industry. Small to large, individual to collective, where do I fit into this?