The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (2009)

Director
Ben Lewis

Main cast
Ben Lewis

Genres
Documentary

Description
On September 15th 2008, the day of the the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £60 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemporary art bubble, the greatest rise in the financial value of art in the history of the world. One art critic and film-maker was banned by Sotheby’s and Hirst from attending this historic auction: Ben Lewis.


Similar movies

Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).
The film is mixture of documentary and fiction examining the new god of capitalism offered to the Serbs with the ending of state socialism. The story's background are a number of strikes in Belgrade during the late 2000s and these introduce us to a number of characters who play themselves. Explosive situations result with employees dressed in American football helmets and pads square up with employers' heavies in their bullet-proof vests.A visit from the Russian tycoon's representative and vice president Joe Biden's arrival complicate the proceedings further.
Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.
An investigation of "disaster capitalism", based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government "bailouts," stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis, in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes.
The film follows the artist as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. To be given a retrospective at one of the world's premiere museums is, for any living artist, the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more - it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: 'But why is this art?'
Based on Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, a look at how people in various communities around the world play a role in the ongoing climate change debate and how they're affecting change in trying to prevent the environmental destruction of our planet.
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
How does artist Matthew Barney use 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals to create his latest art project? Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, Drawing Restraint 9. The documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint journeys to Japan with Barney and his collaborator Bjork, as the visual artist creates a "narrative sculpture" telling a fantastical love story of two characters that transform from land mammals into whales.
Alexander Kluge's News from Ideological Antiquity begins with Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's ambitious but unrealized plan to combine Karl Marx's Capital and James Joyce's Ulysses. For over nine hours, the film expands in concentric circles as Kluge, his guests, interlocutors and monologists make associative links on a range of topics that starts from a filmic discussion of Eisenstein's notes.
A documentary on legendary movie-poster artist Drew Struzan.
Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog returns with INTO THE ABYSS: A TALE OF DEATH, A TALE OF LIFE, a riveting examination of a horrible crime which probes the human psyche to explore why people kill--and why the state kills. In intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (who was scheduled to die eight days after his interview with Herzog), the filmmaker achieves what he describes as "a gaze into the abyss of the human soul." As he's so often done before, Herzog's investigation unveils layers of humanity, making an enlightening trip out of ominous territory.
Silence = Death is a 1990 documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film centers on the response of some New York City's artist to the AIDS epidemic. Interviewees includes East Village artist David Wojnarowicz, poet Allen Ginsberg, artists Keith Haring, Peter Kunz, Bern Boyle and many others. It is the first part of von Praunheim and Phil Zwickler’s trilogy about AIDS and activism it was followed by Positive (the third part, about the Aids epidemic in Germany, was never released).
The love story between British writer, Christopher Isherwood (whose book 'The Berlin Stories' inspired the musical and film Cabaret) and Don Bachardy, American portrait artist.
For No Good Reason a film about Ralph Steadman. Johnny Depp guides the visually stunning journey, smashing narrative conventions, moving seamlessly from interview to animation and in the finest Gonzo tradition questions of witness and authenticity are challenged. Steadman's art is for the first time animated, including illustrations from Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vagas. Featuring Richard E Grant, Terry Gilliam, Bruce Robinson and with music from Slash, The All American Rejects, Jason Mraz, Crystal Castles, Ed Hardcourt and Beth Orton. A touching and at times funny film about honesty, friendship and the ambition driving an artist. This is a true record of the demise of the 20th Century counterculture and hipster dream with Ralph Steadman the last of the Gonzo visionaries.
Legendary martial artist Bruce Lee is the subject of this thoughtful documentary by Lee aficionado John Little. Using interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and action sequences from Lee's last (unfinished) film, Game of Death, Little paints a textured, complex portrait of the world's most famous action hero
A celebration of the musical work of a group of session musicians known as "The Wrecking Crew", a band that provided back-up instrumentals to such legendary recording artists as Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Bing Crosby.
Bruce Lee is universally recognized as the pioneer who elevated martial arts in film to an art form, and this documentary will reveal why Bruce Lee's flame burns brighter now than the day he died over three decades ago. The greatest martial artists, athletes, actors, directors, and producers in the entertainment business today will share their feelings about the one who started it all. We will interview the people whose lives, careers, and belief systems were forever altered by the legendary "Father of Martial Arts Cinema". Rarely seen archival footage and classic photos will punctuate the personal testimonials. Prepare to be inspired.
As one of the big retirement destinations for middle class Americans, Phoenix Arizona has also become a capital of dementia care. Louis visits the city in order to spend time in state-of-the-art care home Beatitudes and with home-based carers, whose love is tested by a condition that steadily erodes the personality and character of their partners.
Political commentator, author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza puts forth the notion that America's history is being replaced by another version in which plunder and exploitation are the defining characteristics. D'Souza also posits that the way the country understands the past will determine the future. Using historic re-enactments, D'Souza explores the lives and sacrifices of some of America's greatest heroes, including George Washington and Frederick Douglass.
The End of Poverty? asks if the true causes of poverty today stem from a deliberate orchestration since colonial times which has evolved into our modern system whereby wealthy nations exploit the poor. People living and fighting against poverty answer condemning colonialism and its consequences; land grab, exploitation of natural resources, debt, free markets, demand for corporate profits and the evolution of an economic system in in which 25% of the world's population consumes 85% of its wealth. Featuring Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, authors/activist Susan George, Eric Toussaint, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and more.
Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.
This documentary follows the lives and careers of a collective group of Do-it-yourself artists and designers who inadvertently affected the art world.
On 11th January 2008, hired by the City of Cleveland, lawyer Josh Cohen and his team filed a lawsuit against 21 banks, which they held accountable for the wave of foreclosures that had left their city in ruins. Since then, the bankers on Wall Street have been fighting by with all available means to avoid going to court. This film is the story of that trial. A film about a trial that may never be held but in which the facts, the participants and their testimonies are all real: the judge, lawyers, witnesses, even the members of the jury - asked to give their verdict - play their own roles. Step by step, one witness after another, the film takes apart, from a plain, human perspective, the mechanisms of subprime mortgage loans, a system that sent the world economy reeling. A trial for the sake of example, a universal fable about capitalism
Twenty-three years after the release of the original Beatles mockumentary, 'The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash', famous artists, actors and musicians speak out on how The Rutles influenced them.
After 81 days of solitary detention world famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is put under house arrest. He suffers from sleeping disorder and memory loss, 18 cameras are monitoring his studio and home, police agents follow his every move, and heavy restrictions from the Kafkaesque Chinese authorities weigh him down. Journalists, the art world and his family all want a piece of him and on top of that he is met with a gigantic lawsuit from the Chinese government, soon to be named 'The Fake Case'. Ai Weiwei is shaken, but during the year on probation he steadily finds new ways to provoke and challenge the mighty powers of the Chinese authorities in his fight for human rights. Ai Weiwei strongly believes that China is ready for change. And he will do everything to make it happen.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive New York artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,143 page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.
REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.
British historian and author Niall Ferguson explains how big money works today as well as the causes of and solutions to economic catastrophes in this extended version The Ascent of Money documentary. Through interviews with top experts, such as former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and American currency speculator George Soros, the intricate world of finance, including global commerce, banking and lending, is examined thoroughly.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
He was one of Germany's leading investment experts with an income of several million Euros per day. Now, he sits on one of the upper floors of an empty bank building in the middle of Frankfurt, overlooking a skyline of glass and steel. And talks. In an extended mix of a monologue and an in-depth interview, which is as frightening as it is fascinating, he shares his inside knowledge from a megalomaniac parallel world where illusions are the market's hardest currency. Marc Bauder's 'Master of the Universe' is based on meticulous research and provides us with geniune insight into the notoriously secretive and self-protective 'universe' of which our nameless protagonist experiences himself a master. Where other films on the financial meltdown have focused on the epic nature of larger-than-life business, Bauder probes the mentality that made it possible in the first place. A tense drama where psychology meets finance - two things that are more closely linked than you would like to believe.
Eugene and Rick are two struggling artists who share apartment. However, Rick has problems with that, because Eugene is obsessed with pulp fiction comic books and has nightmares because of that. However, Rick soon finds that those nightmares could be excellent material for writing his own comic books.
A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.
In the mid-1960s, wealthy debutant Edie Sedgwick meets artist Andy Warhol. She joins Warhol's famous Factory and becomes his muse. Although she seems to have it all, Edie cannot have the love she craves from Andy, and she has an affair with a charismatic musician, who pushes her to seek independence from the artist and the milieu.
An attorney returns to his small home town in Alaska and quickly rocks the boat by getting an injunction against the nativity display tradition and attacking Christmas.
Fictional account of French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
A crazed artist who believes himself to be the reincarnation of a murderous vampire kills young women, then boils their bodies in a vat.
Captain Vinka Kovelenko defects from Russia, but not for political reasons. She defects because she feels discriminated against as a woman. Captain Chuck Lockwood gets the order to show her the bright side of capitalism, while she tries to convince him of the superority of communism. Naturaly, they fall in love, but there's still the KGB, which doesn't like the idea of having a defected Russian officer running around in London.
The young and self-confident Danny blufs at the local police-station that he will escape out of prison within one hour. What follows is a flashback about his childhood with his uncle and aunt, which are 'vaudeville'-artists themselves.
A sketch artist for the police helps a witness recall who she saw leaving the scene of a murder, and discovers that the person is his wife. Not willing to believe she was responsible, he resketches the pictures so they don't look like her, and he begins his own investigation of the murder.
Mural tells the story of Zhu Xiaolian, a poor scholar who travels to the capital to take an examination. During this trip, Zhu becomes distracted by a mural and enters into the fantasy land depicted therein. There he meets the fairies who inhabit this fantasy land and encounters love and hate.
Meet nine-year old Saige, a talented artist with a passion for horses, in this modern-day story about finding your voice! Saige is excited about the new school year, until she discovers that art-her favorite class-has been cut. On top of that, her best friend, Tessa, seems to be spending more and more time with another girl. For help, Saige turns to her grandma Mimi, a well-known artist and horse-woman, who inspires her to take action. Can Saige find the courage to overcome her fears and save the art program-and her friendship with Tessa? Heart-warming, empowering, and fun, it's a movie for every girl who has ever dreamed big. Written by Anonymous (IMDB.com)
An undercover agent is assigned by his corrupt chief to infiltrate a rival department and sabotage their investigation of counterfeit currency. What he discovers is the counterfeiter's real plan. To overthrow the capital. Not by flooding it with funny money, but with an army of undead.
The story of a famous old sculptor, weary of life and the folly of men, who finds, thanks to the arrival of a Spanish girl escaped from a refugee camp, the desire to return to work and sculpt your final work in occupied France in 1943. Model and artist, as they work, speak with simplicity and closeness to everything around them: The life and death, the injustice of the war, youth and old age, the search for beauty in times of horror, the sense and the need for art ...
Julia, an only child of an affluent, bank owning family living in Madrid, escapes from her family to get over her grief that her boyfriend has been imprisoned. Julia is a well educated woman, having studied in Switzerland and England, who wants to become a writer. Julia drives to a little village in Asturias called "Corralbos del Sella" and there she stays in a mansion "llendelabarca" of an old childhood friend "Pilara" she had spent many a happy summer with. Also living there is Pilara's mother in law Tia Gala, and her grandson Juanito. Julia's relationship with caretakers, teacher and priest makes Julia, a woman of the spanish capital, perhaps for the first time to not feel so alone.
As influential Italian artist Caravaggio dies in exile in 1610, he recalls his short life, from his childhood to his initial artistic failures to his later triumphs as he catches the eye of a sympathetic cardinal to his destructive relationship with a dashing gambler.
In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
Professor Leaf, an absent-minded poet with a prejudice against the sciences, is forced to face the fact that his son is a math prodigy with little artistic talent of his own.
Capital Combat: The Return of Robocop was a one time professional wrestling PPV event from the NWA held under the WCW name. It took place on May 19, 1990 from the D.C. Armory in Washington, D.C.. It featured a promotional crossover with the upcoming release of RoboCop 2, with RoboCop appearing during the PPV. The main event was Ric Flair versus Lex Luger in defense of Flair's NWA Heavy Weight Championship. Doom challenged the NWA Tag Team Champions, The Steiner Brothers, Rock 'n' Roll Express competed against The Freebirds in a Corporal Punishment match, Paul Ellering fought Teddy Long in a hair vs hair match, and Mark Callous (later to become The Undertaker) wrestled Johnny Ace (later to become the WWE's Exec. VP of Talent Relations).
About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.
Set right before the fall of Thailand's old capital, Ayuttaya, Bang Rajan draws on the legend of a village of fighters who bravely fended off the Burmese armies. With no support from the Royal army, the villagers drives the invading Burmese away many times until their names have become legendary during the time. As each subsequent battles becomes fiercer, the villagers tries to forge a canon to battle the enemy in a final battle where everyone, women and children included, die in combat.
Acústico MTV é o álbum acústico da banda brasileira Capital Inicial, lançado em formato CD e DVD. Ele faz parte da série Acústico MTV da emissora MTV Brasil. Foi lançado em 2000. O álbum fez grande sucesso e emplacou seis músicas nas paradas musicais (Tudo Que Vai, Primeiros Erros, Natasha, Cai a Noite, Independência e Fogo), consagrando o ressurgimento estrondoso da banda, que teve início no álbum Atrás dos Olhos, lançado em 1998. Os convidados especiais para esta performance foram: Kiko Zambianchi (que, em nota, afirmou à Revista MTV que fora convidado porque "ninguém na banda sabia tocar violão") e Zélia Duncan.
Varian Fry rescues more than 2,000 artists from Nazi persecution during World War II.
In an alternate version of 1949 Japan in which World War II never happened, the Japanese capital of Teito is home to both an ultra rich upper class and the dirt poor masses. The city is thrown into a state of panic when a phantom thief called “The Kaijin (Fiend) with 20 Faces” (K-20 for short) begins to use his mysterious abilities to steal from the rich and give to the poor. One day a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed for K-20’s crimes and becomes determined to clear his name. He teams up with K-20’s next target, a wealthy duchess named Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and her detective fiancé (Toru Nakamura), to take K-20 down once and for all.
A drama centered on the awakening of the painter Margaret Keane, her phenomenal success in the 1950s, and the subsequent legal difficulties she had with her husband, who claimed credit for her works in the 1960s.
City of Life and Death takes place in 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Army has just captured the then-capital of the Republic of China, Nanjing. What followed was known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, a period of several weeks wherein tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed.
Tusshar Kapoor plays Sahil, an artist who draws cartoons. He falls in love with Amrita Rao, the daughter of a businessman, for whom Tusshar had deigned a mascot. The story moves on and both fall in love. But since her father hates artists, therefore, he decides she will not marry him.
Director Julian Schnabel illustrates the portrait of his friend, the first Afro-American Pop Art artist Jean Michel Basquiat who unfortunately died at a young age and just as he was beginning to make a name for himself in the art world. Along side the biography of Basquiat are the artists and the art scene from the early 1980’s New York.
The Newlyn School of artists flourished at the beginning of the 20th Century and the film focuses on the wild and bohemian Lamorna Group, which included Alfred Munnings and Laura and Harold Knight. The incendiary anti-Modernist Munnings, now regarded as one of Britain's most sought-after artists, is at the centre of the complex love triangle, involving aspiring artist Florence Carter-Wood and Gilbert Evans, the land agent in charge of the Lamorna Valley estate. True - and deeply moving - the story is played out against the timeless beauty of the Cornish coast, in the approaching shadow of The Great War.

© Valossa 2015–2024