Since 2013, chilly Canberra nights have been warmed up by the Winter Film Series. Curator Simon Weaving has once again assembled a diverse program of recent films that will be screened at the National Gallery of Australia.
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"The idea is to find some gorgeous films about art, culture, fashion," he says. "That's what we've had for the last four years to differentiate it and to make sense of being on at the National Gallery."
The five films in the 2016 Winter Film Series screen on Wednesdays at 6.30pm in the James O Fairfax Theatre.
"It's nice to have films you know you'll never see anywhere else."
The opening-night film on June 15 is Hockney (Britain, 2015, MA15+ ), directed by Randall Wright. As the title suggests, it's a documentary about David Hockney, now 78 years old and one of the most influential British artists of his time. It's a portrait of the artist and his work, tracing his origins in working-class Bradford before going on to art school and international fame.
"I saw the film in London last year when it had just come out and there was a live Q&A via Skype with Hockney after the session, which was great."
Weaving says there's a very "designery" sense to Hockney's work which is sometimes presented in panels, as in the work A Bigger Grand Canyon which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
"He's trying to convey the hugeness of the landscape."
Jane Kinsman, Curator, international Art, will introduce the screening.
On June 22, Don't Blink: Robert Frank (2015, 18+), directed by Laura Israel, is a documentary about the Swiss-born American photographer and filmmaker, now aged 90.
"He made a bunch of films and some became notorious, like the documentary about the Rolling Stones, Cocksucker Blues – they didn't want it released."
The behaviour it captured so embarrassed the band, Weaving says, they sought, and obtained, a court order that meant it could only be screened a few times a year in an archival setting and only if Frank was present at the screening.
Weaving says Frank loved the freshness in the style of cinematography in wartime newsreels and applied that to his own photography. He collaborated with William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and other notable writers.
"He was most famous for a series of photographs done in the 1950s when he travelled around America and documented in The Americans an extraordinary look at the sort of America most Americans didn't realise was there ... He's someone who's got a great eye and felt he had things to say about America people didn't want to see and didn't want to know."
There will be a Q&A after the screening with photography curators Shaune Lakin and Anne O'Hehir from the National Gallery of Australia.
Francofonia (MA, 2016), on June 29, is one of Weaving's favourite films in the line-up. Directed by Russian Alexander Sokurov, who made the one-take movie Russian Ark, it asks questions about when art becomes war booty and the relationship between art, power and culture.
It deals with the Nazis in Paris during World War II trying to ransack great art from the museum and the efforts of a curator to stop this happening while also tracing the history of the Louvre back to Napoleon, who appears as a character talking about the nature of art.
it is, Weaving says, "a beautiful, unusual meditation on the Louvre".
Weaving's other favourite is Heart of a Dog (MA, 2015), screening on July 6, which he calls "an amazing film". It's directed by musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson, the widow of Lou Reed, and Weaving says it is "a beautiful story/essay about the meaning of life and death and threats to humanity".
From 9/11 to dealing with the deaths of Reed and her mother, and using her terrier Lolabelle – whom she's taught to play the piano – as her guide, Anderson narrates a very personal journey through life, both funny and moving, Weaving says.
Afterwards, he will discuss the film and conduct a Q&A with Dr Gino Moliterno from the ANU.
"It's a real conversation starter."
And finally, on July 13, is the Australian premiere of Philip Dadson: Sonics From Scratch (2015, G). Directed by Orlando Stewart and Simon Ogston, it's a documentary about the New Zealand sound artist and musician who founded the ensemble Scratch and who is famous, Weaving says, for making instruments "out of anything" – including bamboo and thongs.
After the film will be a Skype Q&A with Dadson and Stewart.
The Winter Film Series is on Wednesdays at 6.30pm from June 15 to July 13 in the James O Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery of Australia. More information and bookings: nga.gov.au/winterfilmseries
