Friday, December 14 | 8 pm
Saturday, December 15 | 5:30 pm
Sunday, December 16 | 2 pm
Presented in a stunning new 4K restoration, The Mystery of Picasso is one of the greatest and most original art documentaries ever made. In 1955, acclaimed French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Diabolique) joined forces with his friend Pablo Picasso to make an entirely new kind of art film, “a film that could capture the moment and the mystery of creativity.” Together, they devised an innovative technique: the filmmaker placed his camera behind a semi-transparent surface on which the artist drew with special inks that bled through. Clouzot thus captured a perfect reverse image of Picasso’s brushstrokes and the motion picture screen itself became the artist’s canvas. Here, the master creates, and sometimes obliterates, 20 works ranging from playful black-and-white sketches to Cinemascope color murals, “artworks which evolve in minutes through the magic of stop-motion animation.” Declared a national treasure by the French government, The Mystery of Picasso is exhilarating, mesmerizing, enchanting, and unforgettable.
Director Henri-Georges Clouzot | 1956 | In French with English subtitles | 78 minutes | PG | DCP
