Michael Blackwood Productions

Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

When Brooklyn's Kings Theater -- one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area -- closed its doors in 1977, the neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.

For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstraction - that most quintessentially modernist innovation - maintains a peculiarly contradictory position. Used, on one hand, by post-modernist artists as just one more quotable style amongst many, it is on the other hand still considered an elitist or hermetic language by audiences intimidated by its lack of recognizable subject matter. Yet ultimately, abstraction continues to be a viable creative path for contemporary artists of all generations, many of whom embrace it as the most inclusive and fundamentally resonant of artistic languages. Filmed at the artists' studios, the Dia Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum during their exhibition, "Abstraction in the Twentieth Century."

The Sensual Nature of Sound portrays four New York based composers and performers in terms of their musical lives and artistic passion. Though Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros are all pioneers in American music, each composer pursues a distinct direction of her own. Their rehearsals and performances show a common pursuit of lyrical storytelling through which a new set of contemporary narratives has been forged. Through body, sound, movement and composition, these women have forged their own path through the wild world of modern music.

Crewdson is observed and questioned closely during his work on ten new images in as many different sets.

In conversation with Roy Lichtenstein, critic Lawrence Alloway places Pop Art on a continuum of twentieth-century art that includes collage, Dada, and Purism in referring to signs and objects of contemporary society; Lichtenstein argues for distinctions between himself, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others. In his Long Island studio, Lichtenstein works on an elaborate composition; one of his 4 major paintings on the theme "The Artist's Studio."

"Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies. Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society.

Through a blend of Japanese history and Western influence, Arata Isozaki has built a career around his boldly distinctive architectural style. Constantly challenging the concepts of space, form and tradition, Isozaki’s work dares us to imagine a merging of cultures where artistic movements and methods bind together in riveting new forms. "ARATA ISOZAKI II: INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS" follows the architect to many of his most famous sites including the Barcelona Olympic Sports Palace, Disney’s Team Building in Orlando, New York’s Palladium nightclub, as well as the newly completed Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Curator Robert Storr takes us through the 2002 MoMA Gerhard Richter retrospective.

Ed Ruscha made his very first art in his native Oklahoma, but soon became attracted to Los Angeles . Curator Margit Rowell has examined his extensive body of work and created a brilliant exhibition of his seldom seen drawings. Rowell visits Ruscha in his studio, looking at new paintings with the artist, discussing his progress over the decades and asking him to comment on the many milestones in his large retrospective exhibition at MoCA in Los Angeles.

Art historians and critics talk with Philip Guston about his ideas and new work of the 1970's. Filmed during the making of "Philip Guston: A Life Lived."

A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat genius.

Made in 1980, this film explores the contemporary dance scene through the work of seven New York-based choreographers. They discuss the nature of dance and the evolution of their own work. Filmed at rehearsals, performances, and during interviews, the film is a unique primary source. The artistic roots of these seven artists can be found in Martha Graham's concern with modern life as a subject for dance and in Merce Cunningham's emphasis on the nature of movement. In the 1960s, the interaction of art forms generated choreographic innovations. Especially influential was John Cage, whose radical ideas served as a point of departure for much of the new choreography. Each of the choreographers in Making Dances draws inspiration from the Graham/Cunningham tradition, yet each makes a highly distinctive statement. Structure, movement in non-fictive time and space, and the nature of movement itself are recurring themes.

With the participation of famed architects such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman: Making Architecture Move provides an intimate look into the work of the daring and controversial creator. Filmed in the U.S. and Germany, Eisenman takes the viewer through several of his buildings, including the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, while explaining his upcoming projects such as the Rebstockpark community in Frankfurt and the Max Reinhardt monument in Berlin. His predecessors and contemporaries offer praise and commentary on Eisenman's complex body of work including their own thoughts and theories surrounding his unique style.

"Solid States: Concrete in Architecture and Structural Engineering" offers examples and insights into the ever-adapting possibilities of concrete. With the participation of prominent architects and engineers such as Steven Holl, Toshiko Mori and Bernard Tschumi, the lectures consist of footage and theories pertaining to the developments of concrete as a material within the architectural world.

Known for his bold, abstract and stark white buildings, American architect Richard Meier now takes on the challenge of building the Jubilee Church in Rome. Holding the location in high regard, Meier praises the vibrant visual layout of the city and tells us, "Rome is a city of architecture; it's a city of walls and columns and spaces and places and defined places and wherever you look there's architecture" (Richard Meier). Staying true to his signature design style, Meier has created a structure resembling grand soaring sails which appear steady and peaceful as they stand in striking opposition to the city's landscape. Three curved walls separate three distinct spaces: the main sanctuary, the weekday chapel and the baptistry, each with its own entrance. As a contrast he shows us his favorite churches in Rome by his famous colleagues from earlier times.

This film includes important examples of the Robert Rauschenberg's diverse and extraordinary accomplishments, tracing his development from his student years and his earliest experiments to a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It features Rauschenberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, and was released in 1979.