Mon May 5, 2014
Art and Craft, Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, Mark Becker (U.S., 2013)
SEE EVENT DETAILS
at Pacific Film Archive (PFA) Theater
(see times)
San Francisco International Film Festival @ BAM/PFA
A philanthropist, a grieving brother, and a Jesuit priest are among the personas and aliases Mark Landis has created over a span of thirty years. One of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history, Landis used his disguises to dupe more than forty museums across twenty states with an impressive array of ingeniously crafted fake masterpieces ranging from sixteenth-century religious paintings to Picassos. His trail of deception might have been discovered sooner had it not been for one peculiarity: the works were always donated, never sold. Landis and his “philanthropic binges,” as he describes them, finally found a nemesis in Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Cincinnati Art Museum whose obsessive, implacable efforts to track down the counterfeits at various institutions finally culminated in the unraveling of Landis’s fraud. Despite being a reclusive schizophrenic who rarely interacts with anyone other than his health care providers, Landis takes a witty, often comical approach to his masterful creative process that is fascinating to behold. While posing questions around the definition of art and the value of authenticity, Art and Craft ultimately becomes a captivating study not only of living life with a mental illness, but of our fundamental desire for recognition and acceptance.
—Julia Barbosa
• Photographed by Cullman. (89 mins)
show less
A philanthropist, a grieving brother, and a Jesuit priest are among the personas and aliases Mark Landis has created over a span of thirty years. One of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history, Landis used his disguises to dupe more than forty museums across twenty states with an impressive array of ingeniously crafted fake masterpieces ranging from sixteenth-century religious paintings to Picassos. His trail of deception might have been discovered sooner had it not been for one peculiarity: the works were always donated, never sold. Landis and his “philanthropic binges,” as he describes them, finally found a nemesis in Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Cincinnati Art Museum whose obsessive, implacable efforts to track down the counterfeits at various institutions finally culminated in the unraveling of Landis’s fraud. Despite being a reclusive schizophrenic who rarely interacts with anyone other than his health care providers, Landis takes a witty, often comical approach to his masterful creative process that is fascinating to behold. While posing questions around the definition of art and the value of authenticity, Art and Craft ultimately becomes a captivating study not only of living life with a mental illness, but of our fundamental desire for recognition and acceptance.
—Julia Barbosa
• Photographed by Cullman. (89 mins)
San Francisco International Film Festival @ BAM/PFA
A philanthropist, a grieving brother, and a Jesuit priest are among the personas and aliases Mark Landis has created over a span of thirty years. One of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history, Landis used his disguises to dupe more than forty museums across twenty states with an impressive array of ingeniously crafted fake masterpieces ranging from sixteenth-century religious paintings to Picassos. His trail of deception might have been discovered sooner had it not been for one peculiarity: the works were always donated, never sold. Landis and his “philanthropic binges,” as he describes them, finally found a nemesis in Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Cincinnati Art Museum whose obsessive, implacable efforts to track down the counterfeits at various institutions finally culminated in the unraveling of Landis’s fraud. Despite being a reclusive schizophrenic who rarely interacts with anyone other than his health care providers, Landis takes a witty, often comical approach to his masterful creative process that is fascinating to behold. While posing questions around the definition of art and the value of authenticity, Art and Craft ultimately becomes a captivating study not only of living life with a mental illness, but of our fundamental desire for recognition and acceptance.
—Julia Barbosa
• Photographed by Cullman. (89 mins)
read more
A philanthropist, a grieving brother, and a Jesuit priest are among the personas and aliases Mark Landis has created over a span of thirty years. One of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history, Landis used his disguises to dupe more than forty museums across twenty states with an impressive array of ingeniously crafted fake masterpieces ranging from sixteenth-century religious paintings to Picassos. His trail of deception might have been discovered sooner had it not been for one peculiarity: the works were always donated, never sold. Landis and his “philanthropic binges,” as he describes them, finally found a nemesis in Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Cincinnati Art Museum whose obsessive, implacable efforts to track down the counterfeits at various institutions finally culminated in the unraveling of Landis’s fraud. Despite being a reclusive schizophrenic who rarely interacts with anyone other than his health care providers, Landis takes a witty, often comical approach to his masterful creative process that is fascinating to behold. While posing questions around the definition of art and the value of authenticity, Art and Craft ultimately becomes a captivating study not only of living life with a mental illness, but of our fundamental desire for recognition and acceptance.
—Julia Barbosa
• Photographed by Cullman. (89 mins)
show less
Date/Times:
Pacific Film Archive (PFA) Theater
2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720
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