The Lost Leonardo

Deeply thoughtful and illuminating, DRAWING A LIFE reveals the details of artist Geoff McFetridge’s life and work while delving further into the universal questions of what makes a fulfilling life and how to live with intention in the limited time we all have.

This independant documentary linking poetry, artistic testimonies and performances offers a positive, innovating outlook on our creativity. It exposes the obstacles that may hinder it as well as the powerful assets creativity provides throughout our lives and in many different fields. Catherine Vidal, neurobiologist and director of the Pastor Institute, Albert Jacquard, geneticist and humanist, Jacques Salomé, social psychologist, Cédric Chapuis, director of performing Arts share their convictions regarding this topic essential to individual and collective development. The film offers a constructive vision inviting viewers to explore their own creativity and emphasizes the importance of placing it at the heart of children’s development through an education based on happiness.

At the Vienna Art Academy in 1994, an unidentified person painted over 27 works by Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer. Rainer had become world-famous for his abstract art and, in particular, for his over-layering of photographs and overpainting of his own and other artists’ works. But who painted over the “overpainter”? Speculation rages: Did he attack his works himself? A year later, an unsigned letter surfaces claiming responsibility for the act directed against Rainer – and modern art in general – and accusing the artist of being complicit with “destructive modernism.” At the same time, Austria is shaken by a series of mail bombs by the Bajuwarian Liberation Army, in response to the supposed threat to Austria’s “German identity.” Are there connections between the overpainting event and the mail bombs? Or is this all just a game? A dream? Or perhaps a hallucination?

We follow a project spearheaded by the Prince of Wales, who has commissioned seven leading artists to paint seven survivors of the Holocaust. Throughout the programme, we hear the testimonies of the remarkable men and women who were children when they witnessed one of the greatest atrocities in human history, as well as meeting the artists as they grapple with their paintings.

The film explores the role of photography, since its rudimentary beginnings in the 1840s, in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present. The dramatic arch is developed as a visual narrative that flows through the past 160 years to reveal black photography as an instrument for social change, an African American point-of-view on American history, and a particularized aesthetic vision.

In 1976, the Tate Gallery exhibited an experimental artwork that became a national sensation - Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, or, to its detractors, 120 bricks laid on the floor. This documentary explores the origins of Andre's work and the extraordinary fallout from its exhibition.

Why is it that art by male artists always sells for more than that of female artists? Is it subject matter? Is it machismo? Or is it plain old sexism? In this film, Tracey Emin crosses the country on a quest to find out. She meets artists such as Dame Maggi Hambling and Rachel Whiteread; curators such as Norman Rosenthal and gatekeepers such as Oliver Baker from Sotherby's? Have things changed? Or is it society that needs to change before the art market can follow?

What happened to painter Beatriz González, who made us laugh with the irony of her works, to get to the point of making a self-portrait that shows her crying naked? The path of the artist is intimately linked with the history of Colombia during the past fifty years.

April 15, 1874, boulevard des Capucines, Paris: a group of young feverish painters shunned by the official Salon and mocked by the classical masters, chose to come together to exhibit their paintings freely, in the studio of photographer Nadar. At the end of a teeming century, when modernity was emerging, this group of rebellious artists, revolutionized the world of art.

Colleagues, professional journalists and users comment on the masterpiece of the first lady of Czech architecture, Alena Šrámková... It is devoted to the building of the Faculty of Architecture of Czech Technical University, the work of the first lady of Czech architecture, Alena Šrámková, and from a distance brings users' perspective on how the building has succeeded over 10 years. Journalists who have been dedicated to architecture for many years, such as Karolína Vránková or Matěj Beránek, also collaborated on the film, and Bára Kopecká was in charge of the dramaturgical supervision.