Michael Blackwood

George Segal constructs a type of human form and vulnerability that feels rare in the world of sculpture. As we follow his process at the isolated New Jersey farmhouse that serves as his studio, the intimacy between Segal and his art is contagious. He casts people who he knows, respects and admires, making the final outcome of the piece seep with personality and humanity. Segal is focused on creating a mold that does not necessarily subscribe to society’s notion of beauty. Originally released in 1979.

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

By the end of the 1980's a new architectural sensibility challenged the prevailing post-Modern attitude and brought forth new and daring designs. Driven by the philosophy and theory of Jacques Derrida, the architects of Deconstructivism are rooted in a movement that urges us to examine the space we move through. Deconstructivist Architects documents explosive and seemingly chaotic structures from Vienna to L.A., and interviews those who pursue its aesthetic issues. Filmed on location with the architects and at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, which was curated by Philip Johnson.

As an architect, educator, and philosopher, Louis Kahn played a prominent role in the history of 20th century architecture. An examination of six of his most significant buildings: The Salk Institute; the Kimbell Art Museum; the Center for British Art; the library at Philips Exeter Academy; the Indian Institute of Management; and the Parliament Buildings of Bangladesh.

Description by D.A Pennebaker: "This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it. Blackwood took me downtown to meet Monte Rock III who was singing at Trudy Heller’s but who was also a very pricey and off-the-wall hairdresser and was in fact going to be doing the bride’s hair. Nena’s brother, Bjorn, known as the “Baron” was a friend of the Hitchcock’s, as was I, and the idea of going along and filming the wedding seemed not unwarranted. I’ve always wanted to film someone getting married."

Set in and around E. 77th St., New Yorkers follows inhabitants of the neighborhood, documenting their small businesses, daily encounters and commentary on New York in the 1970s. With the neighborhood experiencing changes in culture, cost and character we get to know a wide range of residence each vastly different from the last.

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

The band of American artists known as the New York School toyed with tradition and rebelled against the Renaissance.Feeling as though free association yielded their best results, the painters, poets and performers of the New York School took a surrealist approach that was concerned less with aesthetic and more with expression. Those associated with the School were unified by their desire to create from within. They created a monumental, dramatic art that remains a singular expression of the crucial modern quest for individuality and personal freedom." Never knowing exactly how their pieces would turn out, the artists of the New York School embraced their own complex humanity and worked from a place of bold, sporadic realness.

Japan's establishment as an economic superpower led to a Golden Age of Japanese architecture. Six innovators stand out particularly, fusing Japanese traditions with modern materials and technology.

"Frank Gehry: An Architecture of Joy" illustrates the unique intertwining of art and architecture throughout Gehry's spectacularly eclectic career. In this portrait, Gehry explores his work of the 1990's including The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum in Minneapolis, as well as his first European commission, the EMR Communication and Technology Center in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. Seeing himself as an artist first, Gehry discusses his early relationships in the art world and how sculpture, painting and small scale work has influenced his architectural style. Like Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol, he has introduced "bad taste" into his concepts, while keeping himself outside of the contemporary dialogue between modernism and post-modernism. He has translated the vocabulary of contemporary art into an architectural language of his own, disobeying the rules of his profession and questioning its historic conventions.

4 Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg acts as a collective portrait of creators linked only by their stated intention of expressing ideas through art. Unconnected to traditional concepts of beauty, storytelling or pictorial representation, the artists discuss the context of their art and how their work and the public's perception of it have changed over time. This film offers the rare opportunity to see a large body of work in their studios.—Michael Blackwood Productions

Motherwell/Alberti explores the artistic connection between Robert Motherwell's Open Series and Rafael Alberti's poetry cycle, A La Pintura. Infatuated with Alberti's text, Motherwell uses his words as the subject for his first venture into aquatints at Tatyana Grosman's printmaking workshop. Historic footage shows Alberti, the last member of the Garcia Lorca generation, reading his poetry aloud. His poetic themes voice an homage to painting, which Motherwell's set of abstract "windows" delicately complements.

Shot in 1959, Michael Blackwood’s first film Broadway Express is a portrait of New York City’s diverse population, as captured in the city’s subways during the evening rush hour and late at night. The film is a portrait of the city through the faces of the passengers held captive for the ride.

Filmed during the commemoration of Einstein's centennial at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, with former colleagues who provide insight and recollection. The panel includes Banesh Hoffman, Peter Bergman, Valentine Bargmann, and Ernst Straus. An understanding of Albert Einstein emerges, giving the audience a sense of the personal side of one of the 20th century's greatest thinkers.

A film consisting of seven episodes directed by young West German filmmakers, some of whom were signatories of the famous Oberhausen Manifesto. The film focuses on the sometimes highly dramatic fates of young girls.

When the Tuscan city of Pisa commissioned David Chipperfield to create a master plan that would bring new vitality to this historic spot on the Arno, an exhibition of selected works produced by him in the last 25 years was also invited. "David Chipperfield: Form Matters" documents the architect as he leads the way through his models, drawings and photographs, explaining his designs in the process. Chipperfield's vast array of international work spans over Europe, China, Japan, the United States and Mexico and as he guides us through his career Chipperfield offers a detailed accounts of his creative direction at every stop.

A portrait of the eminent Nobel Prize winning physicist who greatly advanced our knowledge of the atom. Bethe discusses the milestones of his career: his student work in Germany, his flight from the Nazis, his work on the Los Alamos Atomic Bomb project under Robert Oppenheimer, and his research on the energy production in stars. In working to help solve the energy crisis of the 1970’s, Bethe established himself as one of the country’s leading spokesmen for a safe way to use nuclear energy. Speaking in support of a sensible use, he represents a side of this controversial issue that deserves more attention. The film provides crucial insight into this complex issue by one of the world’s authorities.

Surrounded by his children, his wife Ethel, and Sammy Davis, Jr., RFK visits schoolchildren around the city, and is every bit the good patriarch and dutiful public servant. But it’s the films’ fleeting, in-between, moments where Pennebaker most precisely hits the mark, offering reflection on the possibilities that Robert Kennedy’s all too brief life foreclosed. Set against the pageantry of a long ago Christmas, the film speaks to tragic contingencies of history lying far beyond the ken of politics that continue to circumscribe the tortured destiny of our country.

Meier guides the viewer on a retrospective of his white buildings, from private houses of the 1960s to the Frankfurt and Atlanta Museums of the 1980s--all variations on his trademark spatial and planar treatment. His influences from Corbusier, Wright, Mies, and Baroque Germany are shown. Clients and colleagues offer opinions.

The first chapter in our Masters of Modern Sculpture series looks at groundbreaking work from the brilliant minds that reshaped sculptural art and inspired generations to come. Narrated by George Segal, The Pioneers explores famed pieces from sculptors such as Rodin, Maillol and Picasso.