Ari Marcopoulos

Brown Bag

Ari Marcopoulos

While unpacking some long-forgotten boxes in his studio during COVID, he came across a brown paper bag filled with exposed Super-8 film cassettes and, naturally, sent them out to be developed and digitised. ‘When the material returned it turned out to be mostly skate footage from the mid-90s in New York,’ Marcopoulos said. ‘The film had sat in that bag for almost 25 years; a true time capsule.’

Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle

Ari Marcopoulos, Chuck Smith

Willem Dafoe

Painter, fisherman, visionary, eccentric - Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity, at an isolated bait camp off the East Coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City along with artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. But Bess' art was only part of a grander theory based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals, which proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. Narrated by actors Willem Dafoe and Ruth Maleczech, the documentary combines the beauty of Bess' art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Interviews with people who knew Bess, including art historian Meyer Schapiro (his last interview) and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman bring life to this forgotten artist. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddleis a fascinating look at one of America's most unusual artists.

Where The Wind Blows

Ari Marcopoulos

Craig Kelly

A highly personal portrait of the late Craig Kelly. The film is a non-linear sequence of short films. It's a cinematic poem about a close friend of the filmmaker.

Monogram Hunters

Ari Marcopoulos

Invited to a gathering at a 7th Ward bar, the artist captured a rehearsal by a traditional Mardi Gras Indian “tribe”.

Upper Big Tracadie

Ari Marcopoulos

Filmed during a late summer trip in Nova Scotia, Marcopoulos visited a small town founded in 1783 by freed American slaves during the revolutionary war.

The Park

Ari Marcopoulos

An uninterrupted 58-minute capture of the action on an unfenced basketball court adjacent to the Walt Whitman housing projects in Fort Greene Brooklyn, New York.

Claremont

Ari Marcopoulos

Noah Sakamoto, Patrick Rizzo

Skateboarders Noah Sakamoto and Patrick Rizzo filming each other on a ten-minute downhill slope—in powder blue suits and into oncoming traffic.

Seventy-One Percent of Earth

Ari Marcopoulos

Big wave surfers Grant Twiggy Baker, Brian Conley, Greg Long, Rusty Long, Frank Solomon and Anthony Tashnick call for the creation of marine protected areas in our oceans, like national parks on land.