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.

Renowned English painter, David Hockney, takes us on a visual journey as he shares with us his treasured photo diaries. Consisting of polaroids Hockney has been collecting since 1967, the diaries act as both a tribute and an artist's notebook, often times including images the painter used for his large canvas works. A fine example of Hockney's pictorial inspiration are several photographs of castles he took during a boat trip down the Rhine that were later adapted for a suite of etchings to accompany six Grimm's fairy tales. Seeing his projects long before the work begins, Hockney used his camera to slow time and capture images that would go on to boast his unique style of realism. In David Hockney's Diaries the artist is seen at work on a large canvas of his friends Celia and Ossie Clark and their cat Percy, commissioned by the Tate Gallery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Marking Infinity", Lee Ufan's recent retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim charts the artist's creation of a visual, conceptual, and theoretical language that has radically expanded the possibilities for sculpture and painting over the past forty years. Deeply versed in modern philosophy, Lee is also an influential writer and is recognized as the key theorist of Mono-ha, an anti-formalist, materials-based art movement that developed in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Active internationally over the last four decades, Lee is acclaimed for an innovative body of Post-Minimalist work that promotes process and the experiential engagement of viewer and site.

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.

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."

Art in an Age of Mass Culture pulls back the curtain and takes a look at the cultural climate surrounding MoMA's now famed exhibition, "High and Low: High Art and Popular Culture". Opening in the fall of 1990, the show placed a spotlight on the rapid merging of consumerism and the artistic avant-garde. Curated by Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik and featuring work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein, "High and Low" ignites conversations of mass culture and our society's ever-changing relationship with the arts.

The Masters of Modern Sculpture series concludes with a look at post- World War II America, where sculpture became a deeply innovative art form. Using the objects at their disposal and the inspiration surrounding them, artists such as George Rickey, Claes Oldenburg, and Louise Nevelson cast sculptor in a new light. The New World observes the sculptors creatively utilizing wood, metals, and junkyard finds, bringing forth lively and shocking work. America's remote spaces, discarded objects and abundant materials enabled them to add to the concepts of European modernism in daringly unique ways.

"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.

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.

A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.

"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.

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.

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

A visit to the studio of Ernst Wilhelm Nay, a remarkable, if somewhat solitary German artist, who established his status at age 30, just before the advent of the Nazi takeover. Nay belonged to the persecuted generation of German artists who, just as their work began to blossom, were forced out by Hitler's art dictatorship. Labeling the art "decadent", the Hitler regime called for the removal of Nay's paintings from museum collections and the artist was banned from showcasing his new work. After the end of World War II, Nay returned to painting and worked tirelessly to make up for lost time, producing new pieces year after year and quickly becoming one of Germany's leading painters. Ernst Wilhelm Nay died in 1968 at the age of 65 yet his studio, still intact, offers a retrospective of his work starting from the 1920s. His wife, Elisabeth Nay walks us through the studio, offering insights into her husband's process and creative intent.

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.

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.