Art and the movies-- documentaries and otherwise

Any film about art is usually a bit biographical with some being more accurate than others. Sometimes art is just a tiny part of the story even if an important part. Other times it's at its heart. I have quite a few movies I then purchased for their artistic element. I have seen many more since Netflix came out with their lengthy list of art documentaries. Because it was suggested it might prove interesting to others, I went to look at the ones I own or particularly recommend.  They will be titled in bold with only a brief paragraph review as there are too many for anything else.

Georgia O'Keeffe; The Eloquent Eye; O'Keeffe
The first of these three is a drama, kind of a docudrama or something like that where it follows O'Keeffe's life fairly faithfully to everything I know about it (and I know about as much as is possible given she is at the top of my list for a woman whose art I admire as well as her ability to live a life fully). This film is lovingly presented with Joan Allen starring as O'Keeffe and Jeremy Irons as Stieglitz. Any such attempt to portray her life would be better as a mini-series as her was a very full one with her intense love of painting and for the land New Mexico.   

The Eloquent Eye and O'Keeffe are both documentaries and well done with  interviews and tapes of them both. Stieglitz fascinates me as much as her and that documentary on his work is inspiring to any wantabe photgrapher. He was truly innovative and together they were one of those creative couplings like Kahlo and Rivera that inspires even as their love stories often don't work out so super happy. I recommend all three of these for the art, the philosophy of art, and living the artistic life.

Frida
This is a project of love by Salma Hayek who made this drama happen. Many artistic people admire Frida Kahlo for not only the completely open and revealing paintings she made but for the way she dealt with a life full of pain, both physical and emotional. Great film and highly recommended for more than the painting, which would have been enough, but also how someone overcomes adversity in a way that is strong. Hopefully most of us will never know what Frida went through in terms of her horrific accident and then loving a man so much who simply could not be faithful to her no matter how much he loved her.

Camille Claudel
I liked this film best in the beginning because I sculpt and am a big fan of Auguste Rodin and have actually seen full-sized many of the sculptures he was creating during this period when he met Camille and they began their love affair. I liked it less as it gets into her mental illness that is growing. I don't see her a victim of Rodin because despite her talent, it isn't just talent that enabled her to become well-known as a sculptor in her own right. Rodin was not a 'faithful' man; but when he met her, he had a long-time lover who he would not abandon. It's one of those you walk into it and should realize what is at stake even given youth. If she was victimized (and there are many stories to say her mental illness should have never led her to be hospitalized for most of her life), it was by her own family. Something very scary for those who have mental derivations from what is considered 'normal.'

Andy Goldsworthy Rivers and Tides
This is a lyrical and fascinating documentary that looks at both photography and natural sculpture. Goldsworthy created images and then photographed them. For anybody into photography as an art form, you can learn a lot from the film every time you view it. Although it is the only documentary that I own on photography, I have seen and am crazy about anything about Ansel Adams also. These kind of films inspire and teach.

Sirens 
is based on the Australian painter,  Norman Lindsay, even filmed at his home in Australia. It's about a lot more than painting though, really about our mores and how we see art. It is very erotic and if you don't like full frontal nudity, sometimes in sexual or fantasy settings, skip it. If you don't mind that, I think it's a good look at the philosophy of art as well as the lifestyle and workings of many artists who have achieved fame but are paying a price for not fitting the mores of their culture. I love this film for its beauty and it has a good cast.

I have less movies about the process of creating writing but I have seen a lot more than I own.

Il Postino
is a foreign film about a postman who becomes fascinated by the poetry of Pablo Neruda. It got me so interested in Neruda's poetry that I bought a book based on the work he did while in Chile. Neruda was, to me, kind of a poet about love and beauty but also politics. The power of his work changed the life of the young postman. Really good foreign film but more on the impact of the writing than the struggle of doing it.

Miss Potter
Fictionalized story of the children's author, Beatrix Potter, who created beloved children's classics that are still must read for children today due to their beauty, whimsy and truth. It presents more of the creative process, the difficulty of achieving recognition, and a very enjoyable film all on its own-- even though I do not think it did well at the box office. Renée Zellweger stars.

Songcatcher
is one of those films that it's hard to categorize because it's kind of a mix of subjects, even if predominantly about hill music and its ancestry. A music professor, who has been passed over for tenure at her college, goes to visit her sister in Appalachia and there discovers the mountain music that the people have carried with them from their Scottish and Irish ancestors who had settled there. She is trying to document the history of the songs while she finds something unexpected there in those people, her sister's true self, and one special man. To record those songs as they were being sung was no light task in that era. I love this lyrical little film.

I consider cooking to also be an art and creative form and there are many wonderful movies about it. I won't review these but just list them and you can find more on Netflix. I liked them well enough to want to own them.

Like Water for Chocolate; Chocolat; Tortilla Soup; Babette's Feast. They are all about how food goes beyond something we eat to an art form and emotional sustenance.

Finally several that don't fit a category as such. I also believe that our own life is the greatest art form we will ever create whether we are writers, artists or whatever. Our life is when we really express the inner us and these three films fit into that category of looking at lifestyle that way. They are very diverse.

First is a documentary-- Searching for Debra Winger which is a look at the life of actresses and the difficulty they have with melding together their creative self with their personal. These are interviews down by Rosanna Arquette and I think something to make women think.

Off the Map is fiction and really about how the landscape in which we live (in this case, New Mexico) can make a life happen and how self-discovery leads to other ways of expression.  Lovely film about an alternative lifestyle.

Heading completely off in another direction but about creativity in a lifestyle is Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the novel, which is about how geishas were taught to make their life a work of art.

Where it comes to creative documentaries, I cannot recommend enough what is available through Netflix, although that now depends on renting the DVDs, not having livestreaming as a lot of the documentaries are not available through streaming from what I have been told. I am sticking with the DVDs because I don't care if I have one all the time and care more about the documentaries there than anything else they offer. The rest can be gotten anywhere. Their documentary collection on diverse and often little known artists is the tops in my experience.