A still from “Viva Niki — The Spirit of Niki de Saint Phalle,” directed by Michiko Matsumoto (photo courtesy of Vancouver International Film Festival)
The 43rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival begins today, Sept. 26 and runs through Oct. 6. It features more than 350 screenings and dozens of events including several offerings for artists and visual arts lovers. A few highlights:
- Directed by Mark Cousins and narrated by Tilda Swinton, A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things is a biography of Scottish painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland in 1949. The experience changed her life and provided her with creative inspiration for the rest of her artistic career.
- Directed by Michiko Matsumoto (Japan), Viva Niki — The Spirit of Niki de Saint Phalle tells the story of feminist artist Niki de Saint Phalle. The late sculptor is especially renowned for her large-scale work, The Tarot Garden, which brings more than 100,000 visitors to Tuscany in Italy every year. Matsumoto has created a “joyous retrospective of Niki de Saint Phalle’s breathtaking oeuvre, life, and legacy. It's a testament to the healing power of art,” according to the festival.
- Jason Cohn directs Modernism, Inc., a look at the life of trailblazing American industrial designer and architect Eliot Noyes.
- David Bickerstaff directs John Singer Sargent: Fashion & Swagger, “an endlessly inventive, essayistic self-portrait of an artist confronting his own place in movie history — a film that pays tribute to cinema’s past in order to make way for its future,” according to the festival notes.
- Secret Mall Apartment tells the story of American artist Michael Townsend and his friends, who created a guerilla art project inside the Providence Mall in Rhode Island in 2003.
- And Sleeping with a Tiger tells the story of Austrian painter Maria Lassnig, a female artist in the male-dominated art world of post-Second-World-War Austria. It's directed by Anja Salomonowitz. ■
The Vancouver International Film Festival takes place Sept. 26 to Oct. 6 in Vancouver
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