Film Festival 09 - Picasso and Braque Go to The Movies
Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies
USA 2008, 60m
Director: Arne Glimcher
Festivals: Toronto 2008
New York filmmaker and gallery owner Arne Glimcher followed his
2007 exhibition 'Picasso, Braques and Early Film in Cubism' with
this smart, concise documentary which encapsulates the show's
thesis that Cubism was a response to the new technology of cinema
at the turn of the 20th century. Cinema is placed squarely at the
centre of an emerging aesthetic of movement in the visual arts. Its
unique ability to unite industrial technology, popular culture and
traditional art forms is demonstrated, for instance, in the
proliferating film records of the 'kinetic sculpture' created by
serpentine dancer Loïe Fuller and her imitators. Picasso and
Braque's own cinephilia is carefully documented. The traces of
early movies and their subjects are uncovered in their canvases by
art and film historians (Adam Gopnik, Tom Gunning), filmmakers
(Martin Scorsese) and fellow painters (Julian Schnabel, Chuck
Close). As an added bonus, the film provides us with a
cornucopia of early cinema from such makers as Lumière,
Méliès, Edison, Starewicz and Feuillade.
