Documentary

New documentary gives inside view of art museum’s attempts to become more diverse

“White Balls on Walls” shows how the staff of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum have tried to implement change amid a shifting social landscape

A new documentary tracks David Hammons, the art world's invisible man

A new documentary surveying the revered but elusive artist is playing at New York's Film Forum

Vermeer fever: documentary on blockbuster Rijksmuseum show reaches record number of UK screenings

The film, 'Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition', will be shown in over 300 cinemas across the country

'The outsider': a film about the forgotten photographer Tish Murtha to open Sheffield DocFest

Murtha died suddenly in 2013, having never received recognition for her photography. But today, she is recognised as one of the most significant artists of her generation

Abenaki artist and film-maker Alanis Obomsawin’s remarkable career comes into focus at the Vancouver Art Gallery

A survey of the 90-year-old activist, artist and documentarian’s tells a parallel story about the shifting relationship between Canada and its First Nations peoples

Richard Bell’s activist art hits the big screen in Chicago

Bell is showing in Expo Chicago's sector for large and site-specific works, and is the subject of a documentary screening during the fair

Brutal demand for change: Steve McQueen's Grenfell Tower film at the Serpentine

Weeks after a fire took the lives of 72 people, the British artist, who was born nearby, shot the ruin of the 24-storey tower from a circling helicopter

Film review

A film about self-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe shows the limitations of the artist documentary genre

"This World Is Not My Own", which recently premiered at South by Southwest, parallels Rowe’s life with that of the gallerist who championed her work

Nam June Paik the prophet: documentary creates chronological collage of pioneering video artist's life

Director Amanda Kim’s "Moon Is the Oldest TV" supplements a timeline of the artist’s life with archival footage of his work

Oscarsnews

Documentary about Nan Goldin and her opioid crisis activism earns Oscar nomination

Laura Poitras's film, which follows Goldin's campaign against members of the Sackler family, has been nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category

Film on Nan Goldin and her campaign against the Sacklers shortlisted for best documentary Oscar

Laura Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is one of 15 films on the shortlist to be nominated in the documentary feature category at the 2023 Academy Awards

Life of elusive artist David Hammons—who once sold snowball sculptures on the streets of Manhattan—emerges in new documentary

The Melt Goes on Forever tracks the revered US artist’s career, without his direct participation, to illuminating effect

Hilma af Klint goes multimedia: NFTs launched on Pharrell Williams's Goda platform are latest digital offering of Abstract artist's work

The pioneering Swedish artist is having a moment, with a newly-released biopic, new VR and AR experiences and NFT editions

Laura Poitras’s Nan Goldin documentary powerfully balances biography with anti-Sackler activism

In All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, currently showing in Toronto, the Sacklers become a personification of the oppressive social order that cost many of Goldin’s peers their lives

Documentary on Nan Goldin’s campaign against the Sacklers wins the Golden Lion in Venice

Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed presents artist's efforts to bring some family members to justice following her own recovery from opioid addiction

Laura Poitras documentary on Nan Goldin’s campaign against the Sacklers to show at New York Film Festival

The film, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, chronicles Goldin’s life, career and activism around the opioid crisis

Photographyinterview

Life inside Nazi death camps, as captured in prisoners’ clandestine photographs

Christophe Cognet on his new documentary, From Where They Stood, which focuses on extermination camp prisoners’ photographic acts of resistance

A new documentary tracks the ups and downs of ‘making it’ in the contemporary art world

Kelcey Edwards’s documentary delves into some of the open secrets underpinning today’s art world

A new documentary offers an elegy for the Chelsea Hotel and New York’s bohemian middle class

“Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel” avoids outright nostalgia for an earlier New York, instead impressionistically bemoaning its disappearance

Mediafeature

New documentary sheds light on artist Eric Ravilious, a romantic visionary lost in war

Ravilious was the first artist to be killed on active service during the Second World War

AI uncovers Warhol’s true voice in Netflix documentary

The Andy Warhol Diaries foregrounds the Pop artist’s personal relationships and struggles—with an artificial intelligence Warhol as narrator

Film review

At Sundance, new films tackle painful legacies through archaeology, urban design and more

Also featured is a visually stunning documentary about bird rescuers in Delhi and a cinematic essay about the sexual power dynamics of cinema

Artist Andres Serrano debuts film placing Capitol attack footage in context of US’s violent history

Serrano’s debut film montages the footage created by Capitol attackers with earlier recordings, creating a portrait of a nation at war with itself

The top four art documentaries at DOC NYC

The documentary festival includes films about Jesse Krimes, Eadweard Muybridge and the fraught power dynamics of making money from art

Afghan Girl cameraman Steve McCurry fears for a world without photojournalism

Fabled Magnum photojournalist expresses continued belief in Western documentary photography as film on his life premieres at DOC NYC

Simon Bainbridge
JR news

JR takes on borders and prisons in new film

The French artist’s special gift is to make subversive images seem not just unthreatening, but irresistible

Troubled skies behind the happy little clouds: an interview with Joshua Rofé, director of Netflix's new Bob Ross documentary

The film-maker behind Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed discusses what makes the artist an enduring icon who saw the beauty in life despite personal tragedy

Whimsy and memory on cardboard: Bill Traylor documentary assembles the fragments of an extraordinary life

A new film explores the work of the artist born into slavery who gained recognition in his eighties

HBO documentary illuminates how Black artists shaped US art history

The show centres on a landmark 1976 exhibition by the late curator, scholar and artist David Driskell