Michael Blackwood

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

"Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies. Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society.

By the end of the 1980's a new architectural sensibility challenged the prevailing post-Modern attitude and brought forth new and daring designs. Driven by the philosophy and theory of Jacques Derrida, the architects of Deconstructivism are rooted in a movement that urges us to examine the space we move through. Deconstructivist Architects documents explosive and seemingly chaotic structures from Vienna to L.A., and interviews those who pursue its aesthetic issues. Filmed on location with the architects and at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, which was curated by Philip Johnson.

Shot in 1959, Michael Blackwood’s first film Broadway Express is a portrait of New York City’s diverse population, as captured in the city’s subways during the evening rush hour and late at night. The film is a portrait of the city through the faces of the passengers held captive for the ride.

Description by D.A Pennebaker: "This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it. Blackwood took me downtown to meet Monte Rock III who was singing at Trudy Heller’s but who was also a very pricey and off-the-wall hairdresser and was in fact going to be doing the bride’s hair. Nena’s brother, Bjorn, known as the “Baron” was a friend of the Hitchcock’s, as was I, and the idea of going along and filming the wedding seemed not unwarranted. I’ve always wanted to film someone getting married."

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

4 Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg acts as a collective portrait of creators linked only by their stated intention of expressing ideas through art. Unconnected to traditional concepts of beauty, storytelling or pictorial representation, the artists discuss the context of their art and how their work and the public's perception of it have changed over time. This film offers the rare opportunity to see a large body of work in their studios.—Michael Blackwood Productions

The multiple means of making art after the end of illusionism led these artists to create performances, sculptures, earthworks, tableaux, furniture, shaped canvases, and more, using unusual materials. They explore the process of making forms and giving meanings to those forms. In this idea art, their focus is as often social and psychological as artistic. Some of their activities enlist engineering and construction techniques, others compose texts or scripts that are central to their art. Some cast the viewer in the role of a spectator, while the others demand active participation. The sources for their concepts and art works are equally diverse; the delicate proportions and balance of Early Renaissance painting, the exploration of the surface of the moon, the structure and inventions of vernacular architects, to name only a few.

Art in an Age of Mass Culture pulls back the curtain and takes a look at the cultural climate surrounding MoMA's now famed exhibition, "High and Low: High Art and Popular Culture". Opening in the fall of 1990, the show placed a spotlight on the rapid merging of consumerism and the artistic avant-garde. Curated by Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik and featuring work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein, "High and Low" ignites conversations of mass culture and our society's ever-changing relationship with the arts.

As an architect, educator, and philosopher, Louis Kahn played a prominent role in the history of 20th century architecture. An examination of six of his most significant buildings: The Salk Institute; the Kimbell Art Museum; the Center for British Art; the library at Philips Exeter Academy; the Indian Institute of Management; and the Parliament Buildings of Bangladesh.

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

A portrait of the eminent Nobel Prize winning physicist who greatly advanced our knowledge of the atom. Bethe discusses the milestones of his career: his student work in Germany, his flight from the Nazis, his work on the Los Alamos Atomic Bomb project under Robert Oppenheimer, and his research on the energy production in stars. In working to help solve the energy crisis of the 1970’s, Bethe established himself as one of the country’s leading spokesmen for a safe way to use nuclear energy. Speaking in support of a sensible use, he represents a side of this controversial issue that deserves more attention. The film provides crucial insight into this complex issue by one of the world’s authorities.

Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.

George Segal constructs a type of human form and vulnerability that feels rare in the world of sculpture. As we follow his process at the isolated New Jersey farmhouse that serves as his studio, the intimacy between Segal and his art is contagious. He casts people who he knows, respects and admires, making the final outcome of the piece seep with personality and humanity. Segal is focused on creating a mold that does not necessarily subscribe to society’s notion of beauty. Originally released in 1979.

Crewdson is observed and questioned closely during his work on ten new images in as many different sets.

During this critical decade in American life, artists built on the styles of the 1950s. An explosion of artistic energy produced Pop Art, Minimalism, color-field painting, and hard-edged abstraction. Sculptors and painters on both coasts explored new methods and new subject matter. American Art in the Sixties examines the key figures of that decade including Rauschenberg and Johns, two crucial transitional figures between Abstract Expressionism and the sensibilities of the new decade. The art of that time mirrors the optimism and the affluence, and the technology and the vulgarity of those boom years.

Japan's establishment as an economic superpower led to a Golden Age of Japanese architecture. Six innovators stand out particularly, fusing Japanese traditions with modern materials and technology.

This film includes important examples of the Robert Rauschenberg's diverse and extraordinary accomplishments, tracing his development from his student years and his earliest experiments to a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It features Rauschenberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, and was released in 1979.

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.

Through a blend of Japanese history and Western influence, Arata Isozaki has built a career around his boldly distinctive architectural style. Constantly challenging the concepts of space, form and tradition, Isozaki’s work dares us to imagine a merging of cultures where artistic movements and methods bind together in riveting new forms. "ARATA ISOZAKI II: INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS" follows the architect to many of his most famous sites including the Barcelona Olympic Sports Palace, Disney’s Team Building in Orlando, New York’s Palladium nightclub, as well as the newly completed Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Beginning with their small wrapped objects of 1958, this portrait examines the continuously bold and ambitious artistic ventures of the enigmatic duo, CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE. Though their large scale environmental projects, such as Running Fence and Wrapped Coast, are often met with distress and concern from the surrounding community, perceptions of the project are likely to shift when it comes time to interact with the grand, finished piece. Neither permanent nor purchasable, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works exude the essence of freedom and exist only for the sake of existing.

This documentary by Michael Blackwood looks at the development and production of Glass' opera Akhnaten. The film follows two productions by the Württemberg State Theater, Stuttgart, and the Houston Grand Opera.

Meier guides the viewer on a retrospective of his white buildings, from private houses of the 1960s to the Frankfurt and Atlanta Museums of the 1980s--all variations on his trademark spatial and planar treatment. His influences from Corbusier, Wright, Mies, and Baroque Germany are shown. Clients and colleagues offer opinions.