Michael Blackwood Productions

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.

For his five Cremaster films Matthew Barney's created a multitude of sculptural forms and structures. Recently both the sculptures and the films traveled to museums in Cologne, Paris and New York's Guggenheim. In THE CREMASTER CYCLE: A Conversation with Matthew Barney, the artist guides the camera through this remarkable creation at the Guggenheim Museum while being questioned by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times.

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.

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.

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.

Working together as photographers since 1957, Bernd and Hilla Becher have become known for capturing endangered architecture quickly vanishing from the modern landscape. By the end of the 1960's they were part of the conceptual art movement in view of their minimalist approach. "Bernd and Hilla Becher: 4 Decades" follows the couple through their retrospective exhibition at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof Museum while they discuss their beginnings as documentarians of 19th century industrial architecture.

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.

Architect Peter Zumthor lives and works in the remote village of Haldenstein in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden where he can keep the politics of architecture at a comfortable distance as he enjoys status and praise for his unique modernist buildings. In "The Practice of Architecture", critic Kenneth Frampton visits Zumthor at his studio where the two are surrounded by models, designs and plans for current and future projects throughout Europe and the United States. Frampton questions the renowned architecture on the motives and methods behind some of his most famous works, including his Zinc-Mine-Museum in Norway and the highly acclaimed Therme Vals, a stunning hotel and spa built over the thermal springs in Graubünden. While walking us through his career, Zumthor discusses his penchant for minimalism, the importance of landscape, light and material, and the architectural theory behind his stunningly precise style

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."

In 1943 Herbert and Lotte Strauss made the courageous decision to escape from Germany and almost certain extermination in a Nazi concentration camp. This is a personal account of their dramatic flight, building a new life in the United States, and coming to terms with the Holocaust. "We Were German Jews" grapples with the torment of living with the legacy of the Holocaust. The film chronicles Herbert and Lotte Strauss' return visit to Germany. They were not trying to assuage any sense of guilt over having survived; they wanted to confront the past by going back to where they had lived before the onslaught that claimed most of their relatives. This understated, very personal story adds significantly to the body of evidence that explores human behavior in the face of genocide and insists that we remember the past and learn from it.

In the silent film era, movies were never really silent. In the background of films that made figures like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton into cultural icons, were the musical giants whose compositions defined the very films that captivated a generation of movie-goers. Arthur Kleiner converses with the still-living legends from that bygone golden age of cinema.

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.

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

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.

"The New Clark: Bringing the Ando Experience to the Berkshires" is a revealing insight into a long-term radical expansion of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The film follows the close collaboration between the museum and its internationally-acclaimed Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. Both Ando and the director of the Clark Art Institute, Michael Conforti, ponder the complexities of the project and the challenges involving aesthetic, setting, and community impact during the difficult twelve-year period. Determined to honor the institute's original buildings while introducing the modern elements associated with his unique style, Ando's design evokes a classic tranquility that seamlessly blends the Clark Art Institute with its stunning surroundings.

Centered around the emergence of Constructivism, Futurism, Surrealism and Dada, Beyond Cubism takes a closer look at the artists who ignited the new movements and the alterations of artistic culture brought forth by World War II. Creating out of their philosophy and ideology, artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore pushed sculpture to new limits of abstraction and possibility, feverently building on their predecessors.

"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.

Accentuating the effects of space, light and structure, glass has become an architectural staple that encourages transparency and visibility throughout a variety of landscapes. After its role in the last century's call to a radical new architecture and urban life, glass architecture is today more ubiquitous than ever.

In his London studio, Francis Bacon discusses his work and approach with David Sylvester. His representations of the human figure in portraits and triptychs link him to the distorted realism of Van Gogh and Picasso, who also portrayed the intensity of life that Bacon calls “the brutality of fact.”

The Imaginary Solutions of Thomas Chimes presents a conversation with the artist as he reminisces about his career, influences and artistic intuitions. Director of the museum, Anne d'Harnoncourt, joins Chimes to revisit the galleries of Thomas Eakins, Duchamp and Van Gogh, all of whom were deeply influential throughout his artistic journey. Just as many other American artists, Chimes spent time in Paris and discovered writers such as Antonin Artaud, James Joyce and most notably Alfred Jarry, whose writings on pataphysics dominated Chimes' work for two decades.