Progressive Film Hour - Art And Craft - 10/07/14

Sam Cullman is a cinematographer, director and editor of documentaries, and the founder of Animated Advocacy, a video production company providing services for nonprofit organizations. Cullman graduated from Brown University in 1999, receiving a degree in Urban Studies and Visual Arts.

 Sam was one of the cameramen on Why We Fight, which won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize for documentaries in 2005. He was a cinematographer on the 2007 documentary King Corn.

 On January 24, 2012, Cullman and Marshall Curry were both nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.. At the 84th Academy Awards, their film lost to Undefeated. In 2012, Cullman and Benjamin Rosen made Black Cherokee, a short subject, premiering in November 2012 as part of DOC NYC, a documentary film festival.

Art and Craft starts out as a cat-and-mouse art caper, rooted in questions of authorship and authenticity-but what emerges is an intimate story of obsession and the universal need for community, appreciation and life-purpose.

Mark Landis has been called one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. His impressive body of work spans thirty years, covering a wide range of painting styles and periods that includes 15th Century Icons, Picasso, and even Walt Disney. And while the copies could fetch impressive sums on the open market, Landis isn’t in it for money.

Posing as a philanthropic donor, a grieving executor of a family member’s will, and most recently as a Jesuit priest, Landis has given away hundreds of works over the years to a staggering list of institutions across the United States. But after duping Matthew Leininger, a tenacious registrar who ultimately discovers the decades-long ruse and sets out to expose his philanthropic escapades to the art world, Landis must confront his own legacy and a chorus of museum professionals clamoring for him to stop.

Tune in to hear filmmaker Sam Cullman and Mitchell Rabin discuss the film and the questions around what is art, forms of artistic gift and genius and definitions of creativity.