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This illuminating documentary portrait details the undimmed curiosity and enthusiasm of the grand old man of British painting

In recent years, David Hockney has become the grand old man of British painting, with a giant touring exhibition, A Bigger Picture, in 2012 and a high profile 2014 documentary called, yes, Hockney. With these in mind, this latest offering from the Exhibition on Screen series is a little more modest, taking its cues from the Bigger Picture show with its revelatory multiframe landscapes and the more recent David Hockney Ra: 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life.

There’s copious interview material with the artist, conducted by a slightly starry-eyed Tim Marlow, along with contributions from the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. Hockney still seemingly maintains his transnational life, moving backwards and forwards between the Us (where he created seminal works such as A Bigger Splash) and the UK, where his regular driving trips encouraged a new...

Ascending Leaders 1. Courtesy the artist and Tiff Bell LightboxWhether opting for the institutional designation “time-based media” or the more colloquial “movies,” the art of cinema can seem antithetical to any suspended moment or image. This in spite the fact that we’re typically watching 24 (or 25) still frames pour before our eyes every second. Since his early years as a student at Ontario’s Sheridan College, alongside fellow luminaries of the since-dubbed “Escarpment School,” artist and filmmaker Richard Kerr has routinely pursued an interest in the material elements of celluloid film. In addition to his prolific work in experimental shorts and features, and an extensive teaching background at Concordia University in Montreal, Kerr has quietly been producing what he calls Motion Picture Weavings since the early 1990s, lightboxes displaying 35mm and 65mm IMAX film strips arranged into unique patterns.Postindustrial, on view at the Tiff Bell Lightbox until June 10, consists of...

One of the major revolutionaries of the 60’s pop art movement, a widely influential theorist, and a beguiling, colorful personality in his own right, David Hockney is a prime figure for a documentary, but Randall Wright’s portrait, Hockney, never makes a strong enough argument for its own existence. Curating archival home video footage, interviews from colleagues, and conversations with the own monolithic artist, Hockney is equipped with the necessary resources, but none of the unified focus that’s required to make the nearly two-hour documentary feel essential.

Already the subject of multiple docs going as far back as Brian De Palma’s early short, The Responsive Eye, Wright’s own 2003 doc, David Hockney: Secret Knowledge, and the 70’s pseudo-biopic, A Bigger Splash, Hockney isn’t a stranger to cinematic representation. As recently as last year, he stole the scene with his vivid turn of phrases in Tim’s Vermeer...

Documentaries, even more so than narrative fiction films, live or die in the editing bay. Even in today’s age of boundary pushing documentaries that seem to be more interested in sensory experiences than anything resembling a narrative, editing can either allow even the most sterile and cliche documentary to truly come alive or thrust experimental pictures squarely into the mud. Take director Randall Wright’s latest film, the classically styled artist monograph known simply as Hockney.

As one may gather from the title, this documentary introduces the viewer to legendary UK pop art raconteur David Hockney. An iconic multi-hyphenate who would begin his career in admittedly classical realms like painting only to experiment in everything from photography to digital painting via some truly breathtaking pieces of iPad-based painting. Hockney, now in his 70s and as lively as ever, is best known for pop art pieces like his stunningly modern...

Each weekend we highlight the best repertory programming that New York City has to offer, and it’s about to get even better. Opening on February 19th at 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is Metrograph, the city’s newest indie movie theater. Sporting two screens, they’ve announced their first slate, which includes retrospectives for Fassbinder, Wiseman, Eustache, and more, special programs such as an ode to the moviegoing experience, and new independent features that we’ve admired on the festival circuit (including Afternoon, Office 3D, and Measure of a Man).

Artistic and Programming Director Jacob Perlin says in a press release, “Jean Eustache in a Rocky t-shirt. This is the image we had in mind while making this first calendar. Great cinema is there, wherever you can find it. The dismissed film now recognized as a classic, the forgotten box-office hit newly resurrected, the high and the low,...

You don’t need to be a fan of the artist to enjoy this spirited celebration of his life and art. But you may end up a fan afterward. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

I’m not a particular fan of the artist David Hockney, but I enjoyed Randall Wright’s documentary tribute to him as much for its spirited celebration of a life straddling many different worlds in time and place as for its examination of how his work has developed over decades and across numerous disciplines. Through wonderful archival footage, including the Hockney family’s own home movies, and interviews with family, friends, and the artist himself, Wright develops an extraordinary portrait of a man who grew up among the privations of postwar Britain — Hockney was born 1937 and was 16 when rationing ended — to embrace,...

From the hi-tech iPad art to the paintings of shimmering swimming pools, this film portrait is an amiable celebration of David Hockney, but it never goes quite deep enough

Randall Wright’s docu-portrait of David Hockney, arguably Britain’s greatest living artist, is an amiable, agreeable study – as engaging and undemanding as a magazine profile with a great photo spread. It’s an attractive introduction or reintroduction to the man and his work, and to his remarkable experimentalist curiosity and readiness to pioneer new media. I knew about Hockney’s Polaroid mosaics, but until now I had never seen what you might call the 2.0 upgrade: he drives along, videotaping the countryside with nine digital cameras in fixed positions, producing a mesmeric chequerboard collage of moving pictures in fractionally misaligned frames. Hockney has used fax machines, colour photocopiers, iPhones and iPads to create art. It is fascinating.

The film reminded me...

From the hi-tech iPad art to the paintings of shimmering swimming pools, this film portrait is an amiable celebration of David Hockney, but it never goes quite deep enough

Randall Wright’s docu-portrait of David Hockney, arguably Britain’s greatest living artist, is an amiable, agreeable study – as engaging and undemanding as a magazine profile with a great photo spread. It’s an attractive introduction or reintroduction to the man and his work, and to his remarkable experimentalist curiosity and readiness to pioneer new media. I knew about Hockney’s Polaroid mosaics, but until now I had never seen what you might call the 2.0 upgrade: he drives along, videotaping the countryside with nine digital cameras in fixed positions, producing a mesmeric chequerboard collage of moving pictures in fractionally misaligned frames. Hockney has used fax machines, colour photocopiers, iPhones and iPads to create art. It is fascinating.

The film reminded me...

Eight Days a Week: Hockney Doc Shows Artist’s Colorful Life

Guiding auds through his career from his early days growing up in Bradford, to moving to Los Angeles in the sixties, influential British artist David Hockney’s life is laid bare in Randall Wright’s titular Hockney. Although there have been documentaries following Hockney before, recently Make Your Own Damn Art! (John Rodgers, 2013) and Waiting for Hockney (Billy Pappas, 2008), this is the first documentary to give a full picture of his upbringing, his influences and to interview the artist himself as well as his dearest friends. The result is an intimate portrait of an intriguing man, whose cheeky spirit and sense of fun hasn’t yet diminished, despite now living a relatively quiet life in Los Angeles.

Now 77-years-old, it’s obvious that Hockney enjoys his privacy, and doesn’t like having his life displayed in public as his art is.

There are 18 world premieres at this year's BFI London Film Festival, which is running for the next 12 days. They include "Testament Of Youth," a David Heyman-produced adaptation of Vera Brittain's World War II memoir starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington; "The Falling," set in an English girls school in 1969 rife with seething hormones and turbulent emotions -- the second narrative feature from British writer-director Carol Morley, whose quasi-documentary "Dreams Of A Life" was one of the most striking British films of 2012; and "Hockney," Randall Wright's documentary portrait of the English artist. Joining Morley as a distinctive new British female filmmaking voice is Corinna McFarlane, whose full-blooded romantic drama "The Silent Storm" will also premiere at the BFI Lff. Executive produced by Bond-maker Barbara Broccoli and starring Damian Lewis as a wrathful minister on a remote, pre-World War II Scottish island, Andrea...

Universal Pictures on board film adaptation of classic British series; cast to include Billy Nighy, Catherine Zeta Jones and Toby Jones

The cast of a long-rumoured film based on classic British comedy series Dad’s Army has been revealed.

Toby Jones, best known for roles in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter franchises, will take the leading role of Captain Mainwaring, a stiff-upper-lipped veteran who oversees the Home Guard in a small village toward the end of the Second World War.

His right-hand man, Wilson, will be played by Bill Nighy, known to international audiences for his roles in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Love Actually.

Both were previously rumoured to be attached to the project, an adaptation of a BBC comedy series than ran from 1968-77, but Catherine Zeta Jones is newly attached to the film as journalist Rose Winters.

The all-star British cast will also include Tom Courtenay as Corporal Jones, Harry Potter...

Picturehouses to operate the two cinemas and IMAX screen at the National Media Museum, Bradford

The UK’s National Media Museum and Picturehouse Cinemas have struck a commercial cinema partnership that will begin Oct 31.

The new partnership – Picturehouse at National Media Museum – will see Picturehouse taking over the operation of the three screens at the Museum: the 300-seat Pictureville; the 100-seat Cubby Broccoli Cinema; and Europe’s first IMAX screen.

On Nov 7, the opening of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar will serve as a celebration of the National Media Museum’s role in introducing IMAX to the UK and its status as one of the few ‘true’ IMAX 70mm film cinemas in the world.

Interstellar could be one of the last studio films ever to be released in the 70mm film format.

Later in November, the National Media Museum will play a key role in the release of Hockney, the feature documentary by Randall Wright about Bradford-born artist...

Hockney sees the charismatic artist take director Randall Wright on an exclusive tour of his archives and into his studio, where he still paints seven days a week. The film, which looks back at Hockney's formative years in the British Pop Art scene and his experience of being a gay man as the Aids crisis took hold, as well as his years working in California, will have exclusive preview screenings nationwide on 25 November with a live Q&A from Hockney's L.A. studio, before its release on 28 November Continue reading...