The Mystery of Picasso
A film by Henri-Georges Clouzot
| Like a matador confronting a bull, the artist approaches his easel, his eyes blazing. As he wields his brush, we see through the canvas as the artwork unfolds, erupts, dances into being before our eyes. Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, is making a painting, and Henri-Georges Clouzot, the famous French director (The Wages of Fear and Diabolique), is making a movie. And what a movie! The Mystery of Picasso stands alone as the greatest film about art and the creator. In 1955, Clouzot joined forces with his friend Picasso to make an entirely new kind of art film “a film that could capture the moment and the mystery of creativity.” |
On the Bowery
A film by Lionel Rogosin
| On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting the post-war American independent scene and earning an Oscar nomination. On the Bowery is simultaneously an incredible document of a bygone era and a vivid and devastating portrait of addiction that resonates today just as it did when it was made. |
The Exiles
A film by Kent Mackenzie
| The Exiles chronicles a night in the life of a group of 20-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. The film is a narrative feature with a script that was pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects. Groundbreaking and influential, this is is a gritty and poetic, frills-free depiction of a marginalized Los Angeles community. |
