Christian Blackwood
1942 - 1992Jim Dine: London
Christian Blackwood, Michael Blackwood
Jim Dine
A concentrated look at one of America's early Pop artists, the film was made during Dine's 4-year residency in London. Actively at work in his studio on several large collages, one can clearly see Dine's masterful balance of artistic freedom and control, as he adds and modifies illusionistic images, written words and real life objects to his compositions. The artist talks about his connections to literature and about his frequent collaboration with poets; he also discusses his own poetry, some of which he reads for the camera. The parks and streets of London are the setting for Dine's frank comments about his voluntary exile in that city. On one walk, Dine encounters Gilbert and George as they endlessly repeat "Underneath the Arches" in bronze make-up, their earliest performance piece.
Jim Dine: London
Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush
Christian Blackwood
Eli Wallach
When Brooklyn's Kings Theater, one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area, closed its doors in 1977, a neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.
Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush
Signed: Lino Brocka
Christian Blackwood
Lino Brocka, Lorna Tolentino
Documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood profiles controversial Filipino director Lino Brocka, detailing his rags-to-riches rise in the mainstream film industry of the Philippines. Primarily using interviews with the effusive director himself, Blackwood allows Brocka to describe, in his own terms, the common thematic threads tying together his work, from his own homosexuality to the political repression suffered by Filipinos at the hands of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial government.
Signed: Lino Brocka
Motel
Christian Blackwood
Nancy Harrison Forbes, Tom Willett
Christian Blackwood's fascination with the open road has led him to visit some interesting places and even more interesting people, several of whom are the subjects of this unique documentary. It's a road movie set just off the road, at the type of unassuming overnight lodging most travelers take for granted. The director's natural curiosity enables him to separate uncommon individuals (mostly women) from their otherwise common surroundings: a trio of owner/managers in Santa Fe; the wives and girlfriends of men behind bars in Florence, Arizona (including one touching May/December romance); and (best of all) the eccentric dancer who, single-handedly, revived the old Amargosa Opera House in the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. The film is a reminder that everyone has a story to tell, and those related here are too unusual to be anything but the truth.
Motel
Monk
Christian Blackwood, Michael Blackwood
Thelonious Monk
Part one of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York and Atlanta. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley.
Monk
Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’
Christian Blackwood
Arthur Miller, Dustin Hoffman
Playwright Arthur Miller, director Volker Schlöndorff and actor Dustin Hoffman are seen creating the Roxbury Productions and Punch Productions teleplay Death of a Salesman (1985).
Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’
Monk in Europe
Christian Blackwood, Michael Blackwood
Thelonious Monk
Part two of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. On his European tour his quartet was joined by Ray Copeland, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and Johnny Griffin. They traveled as part of George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival road company to London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Mainz, and Rotterdam.
Monk in Europe
Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel
Christian Blackwood
Roger Corman, Ron Howard
Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.
Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel
Summer in the City
Christian Blackwood, Robert Leacock
Uwe Johnson, Jeanette Washington
The distinguished German writer Uwe Johnson (1934-1984) lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside. His publisher, Harcourt Brace, had hired him as a textbook editor for their German-language school book editions, which allowed him to stay in New York and also tend to his own writing. In his spare time he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to coproduce a film with us in which Uwe Johnson would, on-camera, introduce and question the various characters with whom he exchanges news and opinions on his wanderings on the Upper West Side. We proposed to him that he participate in the documentary. Being essentially introverted he was not interested in the on-camera concept, but was willing to make a list of places and situations that he felt should be included in the film.
Summer in the City
David Hockney's Diaries
Christian Blackwood, Michael Blackwood
David Hockney
Renowned English painter, David Hockney, takes us on a visual journey as he shares with us his treasured photo diaries. Consisting of polaroids Hockney has been collecting since 1967, the diaries act as both a tribute and an artist's notebook, often times including images the painter used for his large canvas works. A fine example of Hockney's pictorial inspiration are several photographs of castles he took during a boat trip down the Rhine that were later adapted for a suite of etchings to accompany six Grimm's fairy tales. Seeing his projects long before the work begins, Hockney used his camera to slow time and capture images that would go on to boast his unique style of realism. In David Hockney's Diaries the artist is seen at work on a large canvas of his friends Celia and Ossie Clark and their cat Percy, commissioned by the Tate Gallery.
David Hockney's Diaries
