The Fremantle Biennale and Luna on SX bring you 4 X 4, a mini film festival screening a curated selection of contemporary culture flicks over four weekends during the Fremantle Biennale.
Sat 2 Nov 1:15pm & Sun 3 Nov 1:15pm: The Price of Everything
Sat 9 Nov 1:15pm & Sun 10 Nov 1:15pm: Kusama: Infinity
Sat 16 Nov 1:15pm & Sun 17 Nov 1:15pm: Aquarela
Sat 23 Nov 1:15pm & Sun 24 Nov 1:15pm: Acute Misfortune
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
The Price of Everything
With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, this film dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a fun-house mirror up to our values and our times — where everything can be bought and sold. Academy Award-nominated director Nathaniel Kahn (My Architect) lifts the veil on this rarefied world, investigating money, talent, markets and the artistic mind. Kahn talks to a colourful cast of experts, including materialistic megastar Jeff Koons, Sotheby’s diamond doyen Amy Cappellazzo, and rebel abstract painter Larry Poons.
Director: Nathaniel Kahn
Cast: Amy Cappellazzo, George Condo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Stefan Edlis, Jeff Koons
Running Time: 99m
Genre: Documentary
Rating: M
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Kusama: Infinity
Now the top-selling female artist in the world, Yayoi Kusama overcame countless odds to bring her radical artistic vision to the world stage. For decades, her work pushed boundaries that often alienated her from her peers and those in power in the art world. Kusama was an underdog with everything stacked against her-the trauma of growing up in Japan during World War II, life in a dysfunctional family that discouraged her creative ambitions, sexism and racism in the art establishment, mental illness in a culture where that was a particular shame, and eventually growing old and continuing to pursue and be devoted to her art full time. In spite of it all, Kusama has endured and has created a legacy of artwork that spans the disciplines of painting, sculpture, installation art, performance art, poetry, and novels. After working as an artist for over six decades, people around the globe are experiencing her Infinity Mirrored Rooms in record numbers, as Kusama continues to create new work every day.
Director: Heather Lenz
Cast: Yayoi Kusama (herself)
Running Time: 1h 17m
Genre: Biography
Rating: M
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Aquarela
Film artist Victor Kossakovsky pays tribute to water in all its forms with this documentary, filmed in such diverse locations as Greenland, Venezuela, Siberia’s Lake Baikal and the middle of the Atlantic.
The latest ravishing visual feast from Victor Kossakovsky, Russia’s most poetic formalist filmmaker at the moment, Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive. Composed from footage shot with the latest high-tech stabilization equipment and waterproof cameras, and filming at a rate of 96 frames per second, this stream of hyper-high-definition images records glaciers, icebergs, mountainous waves, rushing waterfalls and so on to create a cinematic collage that verges on abstraction. The title, the Portuguese word for a watercolor painting, evokes the artist’s technique that uses pigmented water, an apt allusion indeed. In the supporting publicity materials for Aquarela, Kossakovsky and others talk about water itself being the mutable, infinitely temperamental star, the real protagonist, the viewpoint through which the film’s “story” is told. That actually does wash here, representing a credible way to parse the film that’s not just art-speak waffle or PR puff. – The Hollywood Reporter
Director: Victor Kossakovsky
Music: Eicca Toppinen
Running Time: 89m
Genre: Art House & International, Documentary
Rating: PG
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Acute Misfortune
Drawing on Erik Jensen’s award-winning biography Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, actor and theatre director Thomas M Wright’s feature debut is an expertly crafted portrayal of the complex artist. In 2008, Cullen invited Jensen to stay in his spare room and write his biography. What followed was a four-year relationship, both violent and tender, honest and suffocating. Daniel Henshall and Toby Wallace deliver remarkable lead performances as the troubled Archibald-winning artist and the 19-year-old journalist. Shooting in the Blue Mountains where Cullen was based, Acute Misfortune spins Jensen’s award-winning book into a subtle, striking tale of two wildly different men. Making his debut as a feature film filmmaker, theatre director and actor Thomas M Wright delivers a portrait of the writer and of the artist as a troubled and troubling man. With remarkable access – Daniel Henshall wears Cullen’s actual clothing as he fully inhabits the role, and the artworks that appear onscreen are the real deal
“An enthralling, complex triumph… The best Australian biopic since Chopper”. – The Guardian
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Cast: Daniel Henshall, Toby Wallace
Running Time: 1h 31m
Genre: Biography
Rating: MA15+ Strong coarse language
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
PRESENTING PARTNERS
Luna Palace Cinemas