Fascinating interview-based portrait of brilliant nonagenarian sculptor. “The filmmakers seem to have developed an unusual intimacy with their subject… A privileged look into a psyche rendered solid.” — Village Voice
If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, you have to recreate it. You have to do sculpture.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine 2008
Artist Louise Bourgeois, born Christmas Day 1911 and still going strong, is best known for her ‘Cells’ installed in many of the world's great galleries, her giant public spiders and a prodigious body of potently mythic sculpture. For six decades she has been at the forefront of successive new developments in sculpture and art, but always on her own inventive and disquieting terms. This highly stimulating portrait is built around a series of interviews conducted between 1993 and 2007. — BG
“This atmospheric portrait of Bourgeois bypasses the dryness of most art documentaries... fueled by the uncanny sight of an artist revisiting her ideas from over forty years ago with vivid clarity. The film's three sections are titled after Bourgeois's sculptural installation I Do, I Undo, I Redo, 1999-2000, and explore several of her major themes, including memory, trauma, and identity... The most scintillating bons mots are offered by the doyenne herself, and there are enough here to fill up a pocket-size inspirational book.” — Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum