FILM-MAKER Phil Grabsky laughs at the notion that some people are not interested in art.
“It’s nonsense, everyone’s interested in art. Every time you choose a shirt to put on, what pictures to put on your wall at home, your type of car, these are all, in a way, artistic decisions.
“When you take a photograph, how you frame that photograph is, to some extent, whether you know it or not, borne of a history of great artists and how they framed things.
“The television we watch, the films we see, our responses to them comes from an artistic, albeit subconscious rooting,” said Grabsky.
He defies anyone who is given the chance to properly sit and listen to Mozart’s music, or look at the work of Édouard Manet, Edvard Munch or Johannes Vermeer to not be interested.
“These are wonderful examples of what we as humans are capable of and in a world of so much in the newspapers of the destructive powers of humans, I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to spend 90 minutes in a cinema looking at beautiful art,” he explained.
UK-based Grabsky has been making documentaries about various subjects for 25 years, but for the past 10 years he’s been working on features for the cinema, in particular on composers such as Beethoven and Mozart.
At the same time he was privileged to go behind the scenes at exhibitions while making art films for British television: “I’d be there when there was no one else there. and I thought these films needed to be on the big screen where people can really enjoy them.
“These exhibitions are wonderful examples of human creativity. They need to be seen by as many people as possible.”
Persuading the galleries to give them exclusive access to the exhibitions has been almost as difficult as persuading the cinemas to show the films.
The first documentary in the Exhibition Series – which starts on Friday in South Africa with a screening of Manet: Portraying Life – is centred on the portraiture of Manet.
While he is considered the precursor of the French Impressionists, Manet should not be considered an Impressionist – one of many lessons you will pick up from the documentary.
The documentary weaves together the biography of the artist and his influence on other artists with explanations of his work which formed the basis of a huge exhibition mounted at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in the first quarter of this year.
Grabsky knows the documentary cannot just have a life in the cinema right now, but needs to be watchable down the line on dvd.
“We’re self-funded and dvd is an important part of the financial plan,” he said about Seventh Art Productions.
“But that’s down the line, because the best place to see these films is in the cinema.”
As little as three years ago he was still using 35mm and dvd to get his films into cinemas, but nowadays it’s high-definition digital all the way.
“It’s a fantastic time to be an audience. You could be sitting in Joburg or Cape Town and be at an exhibition in Oslo in high- definition.”
In no way does he think these films will stop people from going into galleries: “It’s like a big sporting event. I couldn’t get to the World Cup in South Africa, so I watched it on TV. It’s the second- best alternative.”
He realises people might also choose, on the basis of watching the film, to go and see the exhibition.
“When I saw it on the cinema screen I was seeing detail I’d not seen before.
“I’m basically just a very enthusiastic individual who is amazed at what, with a brush and some pigment, an artist can create – not only a representation of a woman’s face, but their thoughts, their soul, their inner thinking.
“It’s remarkable and, of course, in close-up you start to see the little strokes, the little bit of white, the little bit of yellow, the little bit of vermillion, whatever it might be that together forms this wonderful painting.”
For the big screen they film and edit differently to how they would for a made-for-TV documentary: “Television thinks that nobody has any powers of concentration and must be cut very quickly.
“We actually give you a chance to look at the paintings.”
While it took almost five years to put this particular exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts together, the film-makers only became involved about a year before the actual exhibition started.
The first few years were about setting up the loans, involving lots of horse-trading between the galleries, and sorting out insurance and travel arrangements.
The film-makers started working when there were visuals like the restorers working on reframing, or analysis while also working on the biographic part of the documentary.
“The intense period is around the exhibition itself. It’s busy and often not finished until the night before it opens so we go in late to film overnight, using steadicams and tracks, treating it like a feature.”
Making the film is only half the job, the other half is distribution and getting the word out on social media and making posters. Even that is still easier than raising the funds.
For the films they want to make next year, Seventh Art Productions started a kickstarter.com profile, to see how that will track.
They have permission to film five major exhibitions lined up next year, now they just have to decide which ones they are going to turn into films.
After the first one screened in the UK, US, Australia and across Europe, galleries started contacting them because they want to be a part of this Exhibition Series.
There are a number of advantages for the galleries: “Their babies, their exhibitions they love so much, are beautifully recorded for posterity.
“It ticks a lot of educational boxes because it’s a film that is going to be seen worldwide and can be seen in schools.”
Plus, it can also be screened on tv and bought on dvd.
“For the galleries, it’s great marketing.
“Anyone who works in a gallery, like me as a film-maker, we love this art. It deserves to be seen.”
Why the big screen?
“Because the high-definition screens make it a wonderful way of experiencing art and exhibitions.”
Still, he knows cinemas are commercials venues where films about vampires will win over films about art if that’s what generates more money.
But economies of scale also come into play with the Event Cinema films charging more for the ticket prices and since there are fewer screenings, these can sell out.
“There is certainly a demand and the audiences enjoy them, so while the cinemas are making money from them, they will continue to show them.”
• For more info: check www.exhibitiononscreen.com.
e-mail: [email protected].
• Manet: Portraying Life screens on Saturday at 7.30pm; Sunday Jat 2.30pm; Wednesday, July 24 and Thursday, July 25 at 7.30pm.