Documentary

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

Filmsreview

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

Covid-19 delays long-planned documentary on Black Abstract Expressionist painter Beauford Delaney

The Tennessee-born artist, part of the Harlem Renaissance before settling in Paris, was largely neglected during his lifetime

Criminal claims 13 works from legendary Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist are hidden in a Dublin house

BBC4 documentary—released today—unpicks theory that the stolen art was shipped to Ireland

Are you a Turner or Constable man? David Hockney weighs in on Britain's greatest art rivalry

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist talks about being part of the great landscape painting tradition

‘I transformed it’: watch David Hockney’s painting process by the side of a Yorkshire road

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist shows his en plein air painting style

‘I like perversity’: David Hockney on not being mainstream and why he doesn't care

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist discusses why he pursued illustration when others deemed it unworthy

Caravaggio used a camera? David Hockney's controversial claim reframes narrative of Western art history

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist discusses how mirrors and lenses were used by Old Masters to create proto-photographic images

Who is the most famous US artist of the 20th century? David Hockney explains his choice

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist talks about the art he believes remains fresh and memorable today

‘There might be another life after death’: David Hockney on mortality

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist talks about religion, spirituality and what happens when you die

'Women love my work': David Hockney on his fans

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist ponders what it is about his paintings that appeals more to female viewers

David Hockney’s secret to interesting images

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist explains why one should never concentrate too much on a central subject

Attracted to the uncaptured: David Hockney on how he chooses his subjects

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist discusses what the scenes of Yorkshire and California have in common

‘Painting, reading and a few nights of nice sex’: David Hockney on his daily life

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist discusses how his life is much more sedate than people imagine

'It engulfs everything': David Hockney on nature

In behind-the-scenes footage from an award-winning documentary, the British artist discusses the woodland setting of one of his plein-air paintings