Films & Schedules - Art

The decades-long battle for control of the Barnes Foundation's near-priceless collection of impressionist art—as waged by the city of Philadelphia against the collection's protectors—is the riveting focus of Don Argott's documentary.

“What is art’s relationship to the public at large and who decides who gets to see it? Rarely has the City of Brotherly Love seemed so rancorous as in Don Argott’s fascinating, thoroughly researched documentary on the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. The foundation, established by Dr. Albert Barnes in 1922, boasts one of the world’s largest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern paintings—works that Barnes wished to make accessible to serious students and everyday people. But since his death in 1951, lawyers, elected officials, and businesspeople have sought to exploit the Foundation, ignoring the express wishes of Barnes never to turn his collection into an enormous tourist attraction—and never to move it to Philadelphia, a city he despised. The Art of the Steal is filled with intrigue, conflicting reports, enormous egos, and provocative questions about money, culture, and art.”–New York Film Festival.

Filmography: Rock School (05), Head Space (06), Two Days in April (07).

101 Minutes    

Interests: Documentary Views, Art.

For the Love of Movies offers an insider’s view of the critics’ profession, with commentary from some of America’s best-regarded reviewers.

Boston Phoenix film critic Peary has crafted an entertaining and informative history of American film criticism from its raw beginnings before The Birth of a Nation to Bowsley Crowther’s 27-year reign at The New York Times; from the incendiary Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris debates of the 60s and 70s right up to the current battle for audiences between youthful Web site populists and the veteran print establishment. Providing a unique insider’s view of the film critic’s profession are comments by some of America’s most influential film writers, including A.O. Scott (The New York Times), Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), Roger Ebert (The Chicago Sun-Times), as well as other legends like Sarris, Janet Maslin, and Jim Hoberman.

First Feature Film.

Joining Gerald Peary after the Sunday screening will be Portland film critics Shawn Levy, D.K. Holm, Aaron Mesh, Erik Henriksen, and Eric Snider.

Sponsored by OregonLive.com.

81 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Documentary Views, Art.

In this companion piece to Nightwatching (PIFF 32), Greenaway, a former painter, deconstructs Rembrandt's The Night Watch and examines it in terms of the time and place it was completed, and the controversy surrounding its accusation of murder.

In Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, Greenaway deconstructs The Night Watch, the greatest of the Dutch master’s portraits of Holland’s 17th-century militias. Greenaway, who began his career as a painter, takes the painting apart plane by plane and reads it the way it was read in 1642 after Rembrandt completed it: as an outrageous piece of theater in which the painter bit the aristocratic hand that fed him by embedding within the painting a sensational charge of murder. “A scholarly yet broadly accessible illustrated lecture that examines the Dutch master’s most famous painting for proof that it was responsible for his dramatic fall from grace. A companion piece to Greenaway’s Nightwatching [PIFF 32], this film brims with juicy conspiracy theories and forensic investigations worthy of top-tier TV crime drama.”—Variety. “Just because you have eyes does not mean you can see.”—Peter Greenaway.

Selected Filmography: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife (89), Pillow Book (96), Nightwatching (07).

Sponsored by Southpark Seafood Grill.

86 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Art.

Don Hahn's engaging look at the resurgence of the Disney company's animation tradition.

By the mid-1980s, the once mighty Disney Animation Studios were in a slump. Despite a flock of eager and talented young animators, innovation at the studio was held at bay by an old guard of conservative original-era executives. By the end of the 1990s, however, Disney had produced a string of bona fide hits from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to The Lion King. What can account for this turnaround? Director Don Hahn is a 30-year Walt Disney Studios veteran, and his juicy behind-the-scenes tell-all of this transitional period is an encyclopedia of first-hand footage, drawings, and interviews detailing all the in-fights and ego trips, unequivocal failures and soaring successes, tragic lows and elating highs of the Disney renaissance.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by Bingo Lewis.

86 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Animation, Art.