Best movies like Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box

An anatomy of violence. Four young men and two young women are on a drive. There's a rivalry between two guys for one of the girls. On a remote road, the car stalls. The driver hitchhikes for help. Led by the intrepid girl, the others walk toward abandoned buildings, perhaps a mining operation. One of the three guys sits and reads. The intrepid one explores the building and sees something that scares her. She screams; the two rivals and the second girl run to find her. Something she says starts a fight between her two suitors. The one reading a book walks away in disgust. After stopping the fight, the two young women follow. How can this end?

An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest.

A story told from three angles. Max meets Elizabeth; they live together, but when she talks of marriage, he balks. He becomes extremely jealous, probably without cause, and thinks she's taken up with a friend of his, Jack. Elizabeth, stung by Max's refusal to marry, catches Jack's eye, but the friendship seems innocent. Lena, who works with Max, likes him and realizes she can manipulate his jealousy and maybe engineer his split from Elizabeth. When she's sure Elizabeth is with a man, she calls Max at work, sending him home to confront the lovers. Then, Lena feels guilty and takes off for Max's apartment. What's really going on? Who's with Elizabeth?

A stand of birches. Sunlight brightens and dims, revealing more or less of the woods. A little grass is on the forest floor. Is there a shape in the shadows? Something green is out of focus. The light flashes, and the screen goes dark from time to time. We look up close at the bark of trees. Is the god of the forest to be seen?

The feature length Normal Love is Jack Smith’s follow up to his now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith’s role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The cast includes Mario Montez, Diane de Prima, Tiny Tim, Francis Francine, Beverley Grant and John Vaccaro. Smith was known to constantly re-edit the film, often during screenings as it was still unspooling from the projector. This print has been restored under the supervision of Jerry Tartaglia and is provided by Filmmakers Co-operative in New York City.

An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.

Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in an exotic paradise.

A thoughtful portrait of a renowned artist, this documentary shines the spotlight on New York City painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Featuring extensive interviews conducted by Basquiat's friend, filmmaker Tamra Davis, the production reveals how he dealt with being a black artist in a predominantly white field. The film also explores Basquiat's rise in the art world, which led to a close relationship with Andy Warhol, and looks at how the young painter coped with acclaim, scrutiny and fame.

Shot in France, England, Switzerland and the United States, this documentary covers director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre) and his 1974 Quixotic attempt to adapt the seminal sci-fi novel Dune into a feature film. After spending 2 years and millions of dollars, the massive undertaking eventually fell apart, but the artists Jodorowsky assembled for the legendary project continued to work together. This group of artists, or his “warriors” as Jodorowsky named them, went on to define modern sci-fi cinema with such films as Alien, Blade Runner, Star Wars and Total Recall.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

A compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is relating, or neither.

In this "beautifully intimate and utterly unique piece of cinema", Toby Amies crosses the line between filmmaker and carer, trying to cope with the strange and hilarious world view of the fragile eccentric, Drako Zarharzar. A love story. Drako Oho Zaraharzar can remember modeling for Salvador Dali and hanging out with The Stones. But he can’t remember yesterday. Following a severe head injury, Drako Zaraharzar suffers from terrible memory loss, he can access memories from before his accident, but can’t imprint new ones. As he puts it, “the recording machine in my head doesn’t work”. Consequently, and as an antidote to depression he chose to live “completely in the now” according to the bizarre mottoes delivered to him whilst in a coma.

A nerd is harassed by punks, and is the object of ridicule at work. Enamoured by a co-worker, he buys a tape series on how to be cool, summons up his nerve, and goes to the co-worker's house, only to find her in the clutches of another co-worker. Dejected, he goes out on the town and parties with some babes, but when their friends, who turn out to be the same punks that harassed him earlier, trash him again something snaps, and the irritants in his life begin experiencing an attrition problem.

The life and art of Christopher Pratt. 'Canada's most famous living painter' - The Globe & Mail. This is the first feature-length documentary that Christopher Pratt has agreed to participate in. An honest, funny, eloquent, bizarre, and sometimes unsettling account of his life and art, and an extremely important cultural document.

A documentarian strikes up an odd friendship with reclusive 80 year old outsider artist Al Carbee, whose strange Barbie-doll photography gains acclaim and interest over the course of the project's multi-year history. Far beyond a portrait of an eccentric, Magical Universe is about wonder, friendship, and the transcendent power of creativity

Made in wartime and edited in candlelight, Mikhail Vartanov's rarely-seen masterpiece tells about his friendship with the genius Sergei Parajanov who was imprisoned by KGB "at the peak of his artistic power". Vartanov takes us back with the scenes from his censored 1969 film The Color of Armenian Land where Paradjanov is at work on his suppressed chef-d'oeuvre The Color of Pomegranates - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - and contrasts it with the shocking request Parajanov sent him in unpublished 1974 letters from the Soviet prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's striking last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession. A monumental wordless montage - the entire sixth reel - concludes Vartanov's acclaimed documentary, which, despite the prohibitive conditions it was created in, won the admiration of many of cinema's greatest artists, including Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Alex and John are childhood friends growing up in an affluent neighborhood, they are as close as two can be. When a new girl joins their exclusive circle of friends, a jealous rift begins between the two as they both vie for her attention. Will the young men realize the value of their friendship before it's too late?

In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.

Exploring the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and '80s shaped his vision.

Biography of the legendary filmmaker directed by his son.

In 1990, thieves absconded with 13 masterpieces -- including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer -- from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, pulling off the greatest art heist in U.S. history. Rebecca Dreyfus's investigative documentary delves into this modern mystery, piecing together clues gleaned from archival documents, art critics, historians, collectors and informants (both credible and dubious) to shed light on the as-yet unsolved case. Instant QueuePlay Trailer

Using a conventional Western story with an all dwarf cast, the filmmakers were able to showcase gags such as cowboys entering the local saloon by walking under the swinging doors, and pint-sized cowboys galloping around on Shetland ponies while roping calves.

An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

Three life-long friends work the bars in 1980s Atlantic City performing the songs of the 1960s girl groups.

Vincent Van Gogh comes back to life after being the recipient of a magic potion. He finds that his work has become quite valuable, and begins stealing his works. At the same time, he has a hard time getting anyone to believe he's really Van Gogh.

Baldwin’s “pseudo-pseudo-documentary” presents a factual chronicle of US intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory, combining covert action, environmental catastrophe, space aliens, cattle mutilations, killer bees, religious prophecy, doomsday diatribes, and just about every other crackpot theory broadcast through the dentures of the modern paranoiac.

This, then, finishes eleven years of editing drawing on 30-some years of photography. I will surely work autobiographically again, but the modes of SINCERITY and DUPLICITY seem completed with this film which on the one hand is as simple in its integrity-of-light as those follow-the-ball "sing-along" early silent movies and on the other as complicated as teen-age metamorphosis. Childhood dissolves in flame, struck from the hearth.

The culmination of a series of autobiographical films that Brakhage made about his family (collectively known as The Book of Family), Tortured Dust was shot as the filmmaker's children from his first marriage were beginning to leave the house, and edited during Brakhage and his first wife Jane's impending separation. The first half concentrates on Brakhage's teenage sons as they move around the cabin that has been their home for almost 20 years, and the second half turns towards the filmmaker's three daughters.

This lighthearted romp through Royal India presents a world of Maharajas, palaces, imperiled art objects, and the foreign collectors who will stop at nothing to possess them. Peggy Ashcroft and Larry Pine star as two rapacious art collectors who come to the decaying Art Deco palace of a young Maharaja (Victor Banerjee) to examine a legendary collection of Indian miniature paintings. While vying with each other to get the pictures away from the royal couple—nicknamed Georgie and Bonnie as children by their Scottish governess—they must also divine the true motives of the Indian curator of the collection (Saeed Jaffrey), who, in league with the Maharaja’s beautiful sister (Aparna Sen), may be working against them. Amidst the backdrop of lavish tourist entertainments, Christmas parties, fireworks, and even an English ghost, a desperate game of palace intrigue will determine the ultimate resting place of the priceless paintings.

A comic drama about the weird and wonderful world of Salvador Dali and the Surrealists. This film charts Dali's meteoric rise from obscurity to the world's most publicised artist.

A businessman is reincarnated as a housekeeper, who works for his widow and son.

This documentary for PBS by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin and narrated by Richard Gere, tells the story of the Buddha’s life, a journey especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of the world’s greatest artists and sculptors, who across two millennia, have depicted the Buddha’s life in art rich in beauty and complexity. Hear insights into the ancient narrative by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Join the conversation and learn more about meditation, the history of Buddhism, and how to incorporate the Buddha’s teachings on compassion and mindfulness into daily life.

In November 1915, Einstein published his greatest work: General Relativity, the theory that transformed our understanding of nature's laws and the entire history of the cosmos. This documentary tells the story of Einstein's masterpiece, from the simple but powerful ideas at the heart of relativity to the revolution in cosmology still playing out in today's labs, revealing Einstein's brilliance as never before.

Historian Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of a centuries-old masterpiece in glass. At 78 feet in height, the famous East Window at York Minster is the largest medieval stained-glass window in the country and it was the creative vision of a single artist - a mysterious master craftsman called John Thornton, one of the earliest named English artists. The East Window of York Minster is far more than a work of artistic genius, it is a window onto the medieval world and the medieval mind - telling us who were once were and who we still are, all preserved in the most fragile medium of all.

Laura Cumming takes a journey through more than 500 years of self-portraits and finds out how the greatest names in western art transformed themselves into their own masterpieces.

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.

Jeff Koons is undoubtedly the most famously controversial artist today. Whereas American public institutions and art collectors have long ago established him as Warhol's successor, many Europeans still consider him only as an opportunist and an attention seeker. With his combination of the great entrepreneur's positive thinking, the freedom of Pop Art and perfectionism comparable to the masters of the past, Jeff Koons has undeniably succeeded in promoting the strategies of avant garde to the public. This film shows how he has reinvented his role as an artist into a media personality and the status his works enjoy with a number of collectors who have allowed him to fulfil his dreams. Through his art, his own words and those of friends, this world of seduction and reflection also reveals glimpses of a darker and a gloomier side.

Sam Roddick explores the enduring appeal of Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus, one of the most celebrated paintings in western art. A joyous celebration of female sexuality, its journey to worldwide fame was far from straightforward and it lay in obscurity for centuries. Artist and entrepreneur Sam explains why Botticelli's nude was so revolutionary, and explores its impact on contemporary culture with artists such as Terry Gilliam, who memorably reinvented Venus for his Monty Python's Flying Circus animations.

This documentary, made seven years after the death of legendary filmmaker and kinetic artist Len Lye, tells Lye's story: from being a young boy staring at the sun, to travels around the Pacific and life in New York. It includes excerpts from many of his films, and interviews with second wife Ann and biographer Roger Horrocks. Len Lye himself is often heard, outlining his ideas of the ‘old brain’ and how Māori and Aboriginal art influenced his work. The grandeur of his ideas are only matched by their scale, with steel sculptures designed to be "at least 20 foot high".

When Jill Godmilow’s documentary Roy Cohn/Jack Smith premiered at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival, the number of AIDS-related deaths was reaching an all-time high in the United States (over 270,000). In New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, many artists and filmmakers were grappling with the disease. While Broadway was hosting the second part of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America, downtown New Yorkers were fondly recalling another recent production, Ron Vawter’s one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which the actor, who died of AIDS in April 1994, performed two monologues, first as Cohn, the conservative lawyer, and secondly, as Smith, the flamboyant experimental filmmaker—both of whom died of AIDS-related causes in the late 1980s.

A feature film comprised of 24 short stories THE COLLECTION was made by filmmaker Bruno de Almeida and a group of new york city actors and writers from May 2001 to December 2005 under a project called the DV Workshop. Shot with a digital camera and edited on a home computer these films were shown on this website as they were being made, as a work in progress. The project came to it's conclusion on December 2005 with screenings in New York City and Lisbon.

Television played a key role in the legendary Liberace career making him a household word to millions and the medium's first matinee idol. "Leapin' Lizards, It's Liberace!" video taped in 1978 was his first major television special from Las Vegas. "Leapin' Lizards, It's Liberace!" gives us a spoofed view of a typical day in the life of Mr.Showmanship, before he was off to "work" at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel in his mirrored Rolls Royce. There is a view of the magnificent Liberace Las Vegas Villa, from bedroom to piano motif swimming pool. After arriving at the Hilton showroom, guest star Debbie Reynolds, Liberace's favorite movie star and performer, joins him on stage for a salute to the Broadway musical, "Annie," complete with Sandy the Dog.

Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures, shot entirely through a glass ashtray.

This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with streaks of light and vibrantly colored forms. There appears, frame center, the tapered shape of a tower-- An imposing silhouette against the backdrop of the flaring sky.

Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, including market darlings George Condo, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, this documentary examines the role of art and artistic passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society.