World Premiere
Short of hanging the painting on your living room wall, Phil Grabsky’s popular Exhibition on Screen series may be the best way to spend quality time with a favourite artist. At least, that’s what it feels like as we’re immersed in the infinitely evocative oils of Edward Hopper, a poet with a paintbrush.
Although Hopper’s work seems straightforward—he’s an American realist after all—it’s also rich in paradox. If he seems to distill a certain sense of the American Century, particularly the urban environment, he also ignores great swathes of it; his cities are lonely places, scarcely populated. He’s a suggestive storyteller (we might think of Raymond Carver or Hemingway) but also a cryptic one, inviting us to fill in the blanks (no wonder he’s always been such a popular artist with filmmakers). As for his own life, he was impatient with attempts to psychoanalyze his work, but as Grabsky discovers, this consummate craftsman owed a great deal to the artist Josephine Nivison, who would become his wife and who sacrificed her own career to manage his.
The film draws on leading experts and curators, Hopper’s diaries and letters, but of course, the best reason to watch it is to bathe in close-ups of superb art.
Q&A Oct 5 & Oct 7
Presented by
Media Partner
UK/USA
2022
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
The Leopard
Lampedusa's elegiac account of a 19th century Sicilian aristocrat, Prince Salina, fading into history is one of the pinnacles of Italian cinema, an epic which influenced the tempo and gravitas of The Godfather, Age of Innocence and The Deer Hunter.
Credits
Executive Producer
Phil Grabsky, Amanda Wilkie
Producer
Michael Cascio, Cynthia Weber Cascio, Phil Grabsky, Amanda Wilkie
Screenwriter
Phil Grabsky
Cinematography
Shane Alcock, Robert Burnett, Joshua Csehak, Phil Grabsky
Editor
Clive Mattock
Original Music
Simon Farmer
Director
Phil Grabsky
Phil Grabsky is a filmmaker who has won multiple awards for his directing, writing, producing, and cinematography. He and his company Seventh Art Productions are behind films such as Muhammad Ali – Through the Eyes of the World (2001), In Search of Beethoven (2009), and The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan (2011).
Grabsky has written four history books including the best-seller The Great Commanders. He has been a judge for the Emmy, BAFTA, Grierson, and One World awards, and has won Best Director and Services to Television awards at the Royal Television Society.
Filmography: In Search of Beethoven (2009); The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan (2011); Exhibition on Screen: Raphael Revealed (2020); My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan (2021)