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Filmography - Art, Architecture and Design - Essential Viewing: G - M

Titles on DVD and streaming video as of October 2013.

Art, Architecture and Design - Essential Viewing

Titles available on DVD and streaming video as of August 2013

Most streaming videos listed are available exclusively to AU students, staff and faculty after an online authentications by AUID#.

This is a selective list of video holdings in the American University Library. Filmographies are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the ALADIN catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible.  All DVDs listed below are located in Media Services on the Lower Level of Bender Library. To search the library’s complete videos holdings on prison topics (including VHS tapes) search the library catalog at: http://www.american.edu/library/mediaservices/index.cfm

Gauguin maker of myth. 2011.  1 videodisc (30 min.). Paul Gaugin (1848-1903) moved away from impressionism to create a new art driven less by observation than by imagination. His gifts as an artist were matched by his talent for creating myths about places, cultures, and most of all, himself. DVD 8398 

Gerhard Richter painting. 2011.  1 videodisc (97 min.). Born in 1932 in Dresden, Gerhard Richter is considered one of the world's greatest living painters and now nearly 80 years old, agreed to talk about his work, as a small film crew documents his creative process. Blunt, provocative, unashamedly curmudgeonly, and iconoclastic (but never cynical), the artist says he's 'interested in things he doesn't understand,' that 'painting is a secretive business,' and that 'each painting is an assertion that tolerates no company. DVD 7774 

Girl with a pearl earring. 2004.  1 videodisc (100 min.). 17-year-old Griet must work to support her family, so she becomes a maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer, where she attracts the master painter's attention. He is commissioned to paint Griet, and the result is one of the greatest paintings ever created. DVD 10460 

The grand generation. 1993.  Streaming video (27 min). From Academy Award winners Paul Wagner and Marjorie Hunt and folklorist Steve Zeitlin comes this warm portrait of six elderly Americans whose vigor belies their age. Three are folk artists, one a baker, one a political activist, and one a bayman on the Chesapeake. Though they remember the past, they still relish the present and life it fully. Streaming video.
http://proxyau.wrlc.org/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?FLON;1646908

Grand Paris the president and the architect. 2009.  1 streaming video file (50 min.). Chronicles a team of star architects at work on Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to turn Paris into a model super-metropolis for the 21st century--a post-Kyoto sustainable city of 12 million that will break down the distinction between downtown and suburb, and that will drive France's economic growth. Streaming video.
http://proxyau.wrlc.org/login?url=http://staging.docuseek2.com/v/a/Q7

Grandma's bottle village: The art of Tressa Prisbrey. 1982.  Visions of paradise : contemporary folk artists of the United States.  Streaming video (28 min) . Shows how eighty-four-year-old Tressa Prisbrey scavenged over a million bottles and cemented them together into fifteen houses that contain her collections of pencils, dolls, etc., which she obtained from a nearby dump. Streaming video.
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,102 

Guerrillas in our midst. 1992.  1 videodisc (35 min.). "Guerrillas in our midst presents a savvy exploration of the machinations of the commercial art-world during its boom in the 1980s, and brings the Guerrilla Girls to the screen. This anonymous group of art terrorists has succeeded in putting racism and sexism on the agenda in the art-world since 1985, and their witty and creative tactics have changed the face of political and cultural activism. Interviews with key figures in the Manhattan art scene, record-breaking auction sales, exhibition openings and interviews with the Guerrillas Girls themselves combine to highlight how the myth of the heroic male painter is perpetuated"--Women Make Movies web site. DVD 7978

Hiroshima no pika. 2005.  1 videodisc (ca. 83 min.). Hirsohima No Pika is an animated film based on the award winning children's book by the Japanese artist Toshi Maruki.  Through Maruki's hear-rending but beautiful water color illustrations, the film tells the story of a young girl and her family who live through the horrific bombing of Hirsohima.  Nominated for an Academy Award, Hellfire: a journey from Hiroshima caputres the artists Iri and Toshi Maruki in their decades long collaboration to creat a monumental testament to the effects of the atomic bomb - the Hiroshima murals, which have been viewed by over 100 million people aroung the world. Engaging interivew and extended sequences of the Marukis at work are shown. DVD 1485

Hisashi Tenmyouya: Samuari nouveau. 2006.  New people artist series.  1 videodisc (80 min.). Profiles Hisashi Tenmyouya, who paints in the Japanese neo-traditional style. DVD 8814. 

How to draw a bunny.  2002.  1 videodisc (90 min.). Explores the fascinating, often hilarious, and alway enigmatic world of artist and underground icon Ray Johnson whose mysterious suicide frames the film. He was considered a genius whose collages have been exhibited in major museums around the world. DVD 4586

Hua hun = A soul haunted by painting. 1994.  1 videodisc (129 min.). In the late 1920s, a woman painter specializing in nude painting returns from France to China to teach her skills but finds that the art form is being heavily condemned by the general public and the government. In dismay, she leaves her husband several years later and returns to France to pursue her career. DVD 7970

Hundred and two mature: The art of Harry Lieberman. 1980.  Streaming video (28 min). Harry Lieberman, at age 102, shares his art, philosophy, and love for life. Describes his transformation from retired businessman to artist and the connection between his art and his life. Streaming video.
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,103 

Hung Liu. 1997.  A world of art : works in progress.  1 videodisc (25 min.). Chinese-born American artist Hung Liu talks about her work. DVD 9584 

L'hypothèse du tableau vole = The hypothesis of the stolen painting. 2006.  Blaq out collection.  1 videodisc (63 min.). L'hypothèse du tableau volé: A bumbling art collector attempts to reconstruct the content of a painting missing from a series of seven painted 100 years earlier by an eccentric artist.  To help him in his task, a group of actors pose as the figures in the paintings to create a series of human tableaux.  The collector makes far-fetched thematic connections between the tableaux as a way to figure out what the missing artwork might look like while alluding to the scandals, mysteries, and conspiracies surrounding the paintings. La vocation suspendue: A critical examination of the mysteries of the Catholic Church. DVD 9164

Imagining America: Icons of 20th century American art. 2005.  1 videodisc (120 min.). A documentary about American art and culture in the twentieth century, featuring the work of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romaire Beardon, Thomas Hart Benton, Thomas Cole, Stuart Davis, Willem De Kooning, Marcel Duchamp, Thomas Eakins, Keith Haring, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, Kerry James Marshall, Georgia O'Keefe, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Diego Rivera, John Sloan, Cindy Sherman, Joseph Stella, Alfred Stieglitz, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz. DVD 11054

The impressionists. 2006.  2 videodiscs (177 min.). Claude Monet recalls the story of the Impressionists - a movement that shook the foundation of the art world. He and fellow painters Auguste Renoir and Frederic Bazille begin a forty-year struggle against the Salon, the annual state art exhibition. Overcoming criticism, poverty and misfortune, Monet along with his counterparts eventually achieve the success they had only dreamed about. DVD 4485 

In the realms of the unreal: The mystery of Henry Darger. 2005.  1 videodisc (82 min.). A haunting portrait of Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor by day and a visionary artist by night. DVD 1308 

Inner visions. 1995. 1 online resource (29 min.). This documentary gives us a rare opportunity to meet young artists and intellectuals in Beijing and hear how they steer a course between survival and artistic expression. This new generation of artists does not paint scenes of nature like the classical painters. Nor do they produce the oversized socialist realist canvases that were popular during the Mao years. These young men and women, influenced by Western modern art, have turned inward for inspiration, expressing their emotions through art. How do they fare in post Tiananmen Square China? They have not had an official exhibit since the student rebellion. Nor is there a market for their work. But most have jobs that enable them to support themselves. Since painting and sculpture are considered less threatening to the regime than the printed word, their art is tolerated . Streaming video.
http://proxyau.wrlc.org/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?FLON;1646860

Inside outside: Vandalism, art and vandalism as art. 2005.  1 videodisc (120 min.). "A fast-paced trip around the iternational graffiti world.  Beautifully edited with a great soundtrack, humo r and some genuinely zany characters, it brings you face to masked face with some of the most hardcore bombers and innovative street artists of our time"--Container. DVD 6100 

Jack Smith and the destruction of Atlantis. 2008.  1 videodisc (95 min.). A collection of interviews and clips by and about the revolutionary American artist Jack Smith. Filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema, he is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American Performance Art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer. The film also delves into Smith's tenuous relationship with Andy Warhol -- who adopted Smith's ideas in his own work. Pays homage to New York's ultimate anti-hero and the original King of the Underground. DVD 4694 

Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an abstract painter. 2010.  Arthouse films (Series).  1 videodisc (54 min.). Documentary about the art and life of Joan Mitchell, an abstract painter and an active participant of New York's dynamic Abstract Expressionist scene until she moved to Paris. DVD 10230 

Josef and Anni Albers: Art is everywhere. 2006.  1 videodisc (57 min.). Presents in tandem the lives of two artistic pioneers of 20th century modernism. Produced in close association with The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the film includes rare footage of Josef and Anni Albers and features a number of unprecedented interviews with people significant in both of the Alberses' lives. Robert Rauschenberg, Sidney Janis, Denise Rene, John Szarkowski, John Cohen, and architect Philip Johnson, who was instrumental in arranging for the Alberses' passage to the US in 1933 as refugees of Nazi Germany, are among the many personal friends and colleagues interviewed in the documentary who attest to the legacy and lasting importance of the Alberses' work. DVD 4546 

Judy Baca. 1996.  A world of art : works in progress.  1 videodisc (25 min.). Judy Baca talks about the social impact of her paintings. DVD 9588 

Judy Chicago & the California girls. 2008.  1 videodisc (27 min.). Through discourse, debate and experimental theater sketches, women students confront Judy Chicago's radical views of sexuality and feminism in this cinema-verite about the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College.  DVD 8624

June Wayne. 1997.  A world of art : works in progress.  1 videodisc (25 min.). June Wayne is shown working on her paintings and prints. DVD 9586 

Louise Bourgeois: The spider, the mistress and the tangerine. 2009.  1 videodisc (99 min.). As an artist, Louise Bourgeois has been at work for six decades, but always on her own inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman honored with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.  In her 80s and 90s she created her most powerful and persuasive works - massive spider sculptures that have appeared all over the world.  Georges Braque once wrote that the only thing that matters in art is the thing you cannot explain.  From this perspective, the oft-times terrifying original work of Louise Bourgeois, and the artist herself, are revealed and concealed by this film.  Assembled from a wide selection of sources, including interviews from the '90s, vintage footage from Bourgeois' lengthy career, and brief interviews with Bourgeois intimates and admirers, everything and everyone circles the difficulty of Bourgeois' dreamlike sculptures.  The artist, prickly and intense, offers recollections of her girlhood along with a first-person tour of her sculptures, creating a privileged look into a psyche rendered solid.  DVD 9429

Lust for life. 2006.  1 videodisc (122 min.). The story of tormented artist Vincent van Gogh. Though financed and encouraged by his devoted brother, Theo, and spurred on by the excitement of late 19th century Paris and a stormy relationship with Paul Gauguin, Vincent's prolific genius was tragically marred by epilepsy and madness.  His paintings, which went unsold during his lifetime but are now valued at millions, are shown throughout the film, as are the locations which inspired them in Holland, Belgium, and France. DVD 5808 

Makoto Aida: Cynic in the playground. 2003.  New people artist series: New people artist series.   1 videodisc (98 min.). Follows Japanese artist Makoto Aida as he creates two works of art. DVD 8815

Marwencol. 2010.  1 videodisc (84 min.). After being brutally attacked outside a bar and recovering from a coma and extensive physical injuries, Mark Hogancamp suffered brain damage and nearly total memory loss. Unable to afford therapy he spent the next few years building a scale model, World War II-era town, Marwencol, populated with dolls, where he lived out his fantasy life, and which he documented in photographs. When his photographs were discovered by an art magazine, a New York gallery invited him to show his work, forcing him to choose between his self-contained world and the larger world from which he had retreated. DVD 8815 

Mary Cassatt, impressionist from Philadelphia. 1975.  The Originals, women in art.  1 videodisc (29 min). One of a series of biographical documentaries whose focus is on the integration of the artists' lives and works. The best examples of Cassatt's works have been collected for presentation in order to reveal their quality, variety, and originality. Her years in Paris, her relationship with Degas, the influence of her socially prominent Philadelphia family, the places she lived and painted are shown with on-location footage and stills. DVD 4791 

Masterpieces 1800 to 1850. 2008.  1 videodisc (147 min.). Three masterpieces created between 1800 to 1850 are profiled, including Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808, Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People and Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave. DVD 6853 

Masterpieces 1851 to 1900. 2008.  1 videodisc (147 min.). Three masterpieces created between 1851 and 1900 are examined, including Édouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, James McNeill Whistler's Whistler's Mother and Edvard Munch's The Scream. DVD 6854 

Masterpieces of sculpture. 2008.  1 videodisc (146 min.). Three works considered to be masterpieces of sculpture are profiled, including Michelangelo's David, Edgar Degas's The little dancer aged 14 and Auguste Rodin's The kiss. DVD 6857 

Masterpieces of the twentieth century. 2008.  1 videodisc (147 min.). Three works considered to be masterpieces of the Twentieth century are examined, including Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Gustav Klimt's The Kiss and Salvador Dalí's Christ of Saint John of the Cross. DVD 6856 

Maya Lin a strong clear vision. 2003.  1 videodisc (83 min.). Reveals the origins of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tells the story of its 21 year old creator, a Yale architecture student. Lin's plan was selected from over 1,000 different designs. And what began as one of the country's most bitterly disputed monuments became one of the world's most inspirational and frequently visited memorials . DVD 2781 

Me and you and everyone we know. 2005.  1 videodisc (92 min.). A lonely shoe salesman and an eccentric performance artist struggle to connect in this unique take on contemporary life. DVD 2480 

Milton Resnick. 1997.  A world of art : works in progress.  1 videodisc (25 min.). Milton Resnick talks about his show of Genesis-themed paintings. DVD 9587

Moon and sixpence. 2005.  1 videodisc (89 min.). The brillant, adventurous and tragic life of the famed impressionist painter Paul Gauguin is brought to the screen in this thinly diguised biography based on the best-selling novel by Somerset Maugham. DVD 1454 

My architect: A son's journey. 2004.  1 videodisc (116 min.). Nathaniel Kahn documents the life and works of his father, Louis Kahn. Louis Kahn had an "official" family, including his wife Esther and daughter Sue Ann. He had two other secret families: with fellow architect Anne Tyng he had a daughter, Alexandra, and with his colleague Harriet Pattison he had Nathaniel. DVD 1221 

My kid could paint that. 2008.  1 videodisc (83 min.). Tracks the overnight celebrity of Marla Olmstead, a toddler who creates gallery-worthy paintings on the dining room table of her family home. Sales of her paintings reach $300,000. Then the bubble burst. When a 2005 profile by '60 minutes' suggests that Marla had help making her paintings, the finger is pointed at her father, an amateur artist and night manager at Frito Lay. Almost overnight, her family is ensnared in a web of accusation and denial - the burden of proof placed squarely in their lap. Is Marla a child prodigy or an innocent victim of a hoax? DVD 3986 

Le mystère Picasso = The mystery of Picasso. 2003.  1 videodisc (75 min.). Picasso creates over 15 works on screen, in a study which reveals the artist's thought processes. Works on the film were destroyed after filming. DVD 4488