Teddy Bear Maelstrom (1983)

A wealthy woman from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after her husband of 16 years leaves her for a younger woman.

Mark Rothko, a master of abstract expressionism, created 835 paintings during his five-decade career.

Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. This first glimpse inside his studio in decades is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old's creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators.

Jackson Pollock said, “he makes the rest of us look academic,” Mark Rothko acknowledged him as a “myth-maker” and Clement Greenberg called him “a highly influential maverick and an independent genius.” Clyfford Still, one of the strongest, most original contributors to abstract expressionism, walked away from the commercial art world at the height of his career. Extremely disciplined, principled, and prolific, Still left behind a treasure trove of works like no other major artist in history. With a wonderful mosaic of archival material, found footage and audio recorded by the artist himself, Lifeline paints a picture of a modern icon, his uncompromising creative journey and the price of independence.

How can an artist discover abstraction by the beginning of the 20th century and nobody is noticing? A woman, misjudged and concealed, rocks the art world with her mind-blowing oeuvre. Hilma af Klint was a pioneer creating her first abstract painting in 1906, four years before Vassily Kandinsky. But why was she ignored? Why are her paintings not available on the market? This first film on her is about her life and work, the role of women in art history and the discovery of an art scandal. Her quest for meaning in life and a boundless thinking led into a timeless, outstanding oeuvre.

Colour, form, area - this is the formula of the greatest pioneer of abstract painting. Kandinsky came to art late in life, but his impact through Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Bauhaus paved the way for modern art. In 1913, he created one of the first abstract pictures, the theoretical basis of which was inspired by his essay Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art). Accompanied by Mussorgsky's Pictures From An Exhibition Labarthe goes on a sensual journey which makes the soul resound with colours and forms. "A picture has to resound and must be bathed in an inner glow." Kandinsky

Abstract animation by Satoh Yoshinao

Curator Robert Storr takes us through the 2002 MoMA Gerhard Richter retrospective.

A man watches a video as his face, clothes and surroundings are illuminated by a litany of colors.

The story of a man who has reached the very top of society and eventually became a victim of his own ideology.

Schwartz reordered and combined angular contours, broken planes, and distorted proportions in her own pictorial structures in an homage to Picasso's style.

A groundbreaking documentary on the internationally renowned painter, designated by ARTnews Magazine one of the world's top-ten living artists. This documentary was shot over a period of four years, from 1998 through 2002, Agnes Martin's ninetieth year. Interviews with Martin are inter-cut with shots at work in her studio in Taos, New Mexico, with photographs and archival footage, and with images of her work from over five decades. It is a venue for Martin to speak about her work, her working methods, her life as an artist, and her views about the creative process. She also discusses her film, "Gabriel" and reads from her poetry and lectures. In keeping with Martin's chosen life of solitude, she alone appears in the documentary.

A description of some parts of the world - explored, visited, documented, imagined. An abstract attempt at finding them again. The title refers to geographer and civil servant of the Republic of Venice Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557).

“Pat Pasloff is a strong artist within a strong tradition…She has transcended some of the angst of Abstract Expressionism, without descending into something that is bland or formulaic or potentially conceptual” – David Cohen Pat Pasloff (1928 – 2011) was an ambitious abstract expressionist painter who produced large scale, fresh, and vital bodies of work. Studying under pioneering artist William de Kooning, she was able to find her own path and grow from his influence. Her patterns and grids come alive with the materiality and physicality of her paintings. Watch as Pasloff describes her experiences painting, gaining an education in art, and as her visual language of emotion comes alive.

A mathematical play on one repeated movement. It imparts a sense of possibilities: that something simple can produce complex and unexpected patterns. As with an atom, the variety of possibilities from a base movement is potentially infinite.

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.

The film was produced applying mixed techniques on Super 8 film support.

Experimental short film by Rainer Kohlberger

An Animated Short Film by Glen Entis