The Heartbreaking Beauty of Genius
A celebration to the mad, heartbreaking and most extreme expressions of beauty. A compilation of films portraying the life of the world's biggest genius.
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- DirectorBruce BeresfordStarsSarah WynterVincent PerezJonathan PryceThis movie is a biopic of Alma Mahler, the wife of composer Gustav Mahler (as well as Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel), and the mistress of Oskar Kokoschka.(Named after one of Kokoschka's most famous paintings, Bride of the Wind or Tempest).
- DirectorJohn MayburyStarsDerek JacobiDaniel CraigTilda SwintonBiography of British painter Francis Bacon focuses on his relationship with his lover, George Dyer, a former small time crook.
- DirectorGiorgi ShengelaiaStarsAvtandil VaraziDodo AbashidzeZurab KapianidzeThe story of self-taught Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani.This Soviet film is a biography of the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmanishvili (1863-1918), usually known as Pirosmani.
Pirosmani died of starvation, unable to sell any of his works for sufficient money to support life. Ironically, his primitivist style was later very much in fashion, and huge sums were paid for his surviving paintings. This well-regarded film focuses on Pirosmani's everyday life in the Georgia of his time, and is photographed in a bold style which echoes the artist's vision and causes the viewer to enter into it. This is necessary, because little factual material about the artist was available; - DirectorHerbert VeselyStarsMathieu CarrièreJane BirkinChristine KaufmannThe life of cursed painter Egon Shiele, specialized in nudes, and on his late conflicting love for two women.Egon Schiele – Exzess und Bestrafung, is a 1980 film based on the life of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. It stars Mathieu Carriere as Schiele with Jane Birkin as his artist muse Walburga (Wally) The film is essentially a depiction of obsession and its constituents of sex, alcohol and uncontrolled emotions. Set in Austria during the Great War, Schiele is depicted as the agent of social change leading to destruction of those he loves and ultimately of himself.
- DirectorAndrei TarkovskyStarsAnatoliy SolonitsynIvan LapikovNikolay GrinkoThe life, times and afflictions of the fifteenth-century Russian iconographer St. Andrei Rublev.
- DirectorBarbet SchroederStarsMickey RourkeFaye DunawayAlice KrigeBased on the life of successful poet Charles Bukowski and his exploits in Hollywood during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.Semi-biography of Charles Bukowski during is mad alcoholic times in LA.
- DirectorMartin ProvostStarsYolande MoreauUlrich TukurAnne BennentIn 1912 German collector Wilhelm Uhde rents a flat in Senlis to write and take a break from Parisian life. He hires a 48-year old cleaning lady, Séraphine. Some time later, he notices a small painting on wood at a local notable home.
- DirectorHaakon SandøyStarsLise FjeldstadDaniel OlbrychskiPer OscarssonDagny Juell was the doctors daughter who left Kongsvinger for Berlin to study music, and became famous painter Edvard Munchs mistress.Dagny is a 1977 Norwegian-Polish documentary film directed by Haakon Sandøy. The subject of the film is the Norwegian writer Dagny Juel, and her relationship to such men as Stanisław Przybyszewski, Edvard Munch and August Strindberg.
- DirectorDerek JarmanStarsNoam AlmazDexter FletcherNigel TerryA retelling of the life of the celebrated 17th-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld.
- DirectorJames IvoryStarsAnthony HopkinsNatascha McElhoneJulianne MooreThe passionate Merchant Ivory drama tells the story of Françoise Gilot (Natascha McElhone), the only lover of Pablo Picasso (Sir Anthony Hopkins) who was strong enough to withstand his ferocious cruelty, and move on with her life.
- DirectorJulie TaymorStarsSalma HayekAlfred MolinaGeoffrey RushA biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.The biopic of Frida Kahlo and her obsession for painting, Diego Rivera and Communism.
- StarsSimon SchamaAllan CordunerPaul PopplewellFocusing on eight iconic works of art, Power of Art reveals the history of visual imagination through the ages.The most brilliant TV series made on Art, through 8 episodes: Caravaggio; Bernini; Rembrandt; David; Turner; Van Gogh; Picasso and Rothko.
- DirectorAlan RudolphStarsJennifer Jason LeighCampbell ScottMatthew BroderickDorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
- DirectorRené FéretStarsMarie FéretMarc BarbéDelphine ChuillotA reimagined account of the early life of Maria Anna 'Nannerl' Mozart, five years older than Wolfgang, and a musical prodigy in her own right.
- DirectorKonrad WolfStarsDonatas BanionisOlivera KatarinaFred DürenAs a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya - played by the great Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis (The Red Tent, Solaris) - has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people. This contradiction presents him with a dilemma. Based on Lion Feuchtwanger's novel, Goya is one of ten East German films originally shot in 70mm. This release is the director's cut and shows the influence of great filmmakers from Buñuel and Saura, to Eisenstein. Goya was nominated for the Golden Prize at the 1971 Moscow International Film Festival.As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya - played by the great Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis (The Red Tent, Solaris) - has attained wealth and reputation. Based on Lion Feuchtwanger's novel, Goya is one of ten East German films originally shot in 70mm. This release is the director's cut and shows the influence of great filmmakers from Buñuel and Saura, to Eisenstein.
- DirectorCarl Theodor DreyerStarsMaria FalconettiEugene SilvainAndré BerleyIn 1431, Jeanne d'Arc is placed on trial on charges of heresy. The ecclesiastical jurists attempt to force Jeanne to recant her claims of holy visions.
- DirectorPeter GreenawayStarsMartin FreemanEmily HolmesEva BirthistleAn extravagant, exotic and moving look at Rembrandt's romantic and professional life, and the controversy he created by the identification of a murderer in the painting 'The Night Watch'.
- DirectorPhilip KaufmanStarsFred WardUma ThurmanMaria de MedeirosAnaïs Nin meets American writer Henry Miller in Paris in 1931. She keeps a diary of her sexual awakening, which includes Henry and his wife June.The story of Anais Nin and Henry Miller.
- DirectorJulian SchnabelStarsMathieu AmalricEmmanuelle SeignerMarie-Josée CrozeThe true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn't paralyzed.
- DirectorChristine JeffsStarsGwyneth PaltrowDaniel CraigLucy DavenportStory of the relationship between poets Edward James "Ted" Hughes and Sylvia Plath.The biopic about Sylvia Plath.
- DirectorRichard LaxtonStarsDakota FanningGreg WiseTom SturridgeA look at the scandalous love triangle between Victorian art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise), his teenage bride Euphemia "Effie" Gray (Dakota Fanning), and Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge).A look on painter John Ruskin's relationship with is young wife Effie Gray, the development of the prominent Pre-Raphaelite era, showing us the progression of painters such as Millais.
- DirectorPhilip KaufmanStarsNicole KidmanClive OwenDavid StrathairnA drama centered on the romance between Ernest Hemingway and World War II correspondent Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's inspiration for For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the only woman who ever asked for a divorce from the writer.
- DirectorJan KounenStarsAnna MouglalisMads MikkelsenElena MorozovaParis 1913. Coco Chanel is infatuated with the rich and handsome Boy Capel, but she is also compelled by her work. Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is about to be performed. The revolutionary dissonances of Igor's work parallel Coco's radical ideas. She wants to democratize women's fashion; he wants to redefine musical taste. Coco attends the scandalous first performance of The Rite in a chic white dress. The music and ballet are criticized as too modern, too foreign. Coco is moved but Igor is inconsolable. Paris 1920, Coco is newly wealthy and successful but grief-stricken after Boy's death in a car crash. Igor, following the Russian Revolution is now a penniless refugee living in exile in Paris. Coco is introduced to Igor by Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. The attraction between them is instant and electric. Coco invites Igor along with his wife - now sick with consumption - together with his four children and a menagerie of birds to stay at her new villa, Bel Respiro, in Garches.Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky's flaming love story.
- DirectorJoann SfarStarsEric ElmosninoLucy GordonLaetitia CastaA glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.
- DirectorWalter FasanoLuca GuadagninoStarsBernardo BertolucciThe art of cinema recounted in first person by Bernardo Bertolucci. Through a editing that articulates his declarations and thoughts in a flow of intense feelings, psychological introspection, anecdotes and visions, we are offered an insight into the identity of an authentic and extraordinary practitioner of the art of mise-en-scène. It took the authors two years of work, delving with patience and enthusiasm into over three hundred hours of library footage from archives all over the world, to complete their film essay Bertolucci on Bertolucci.A documentary that works as an auto-biography and critical analysis of Betrolucci's points of view on his own work and career.