10:45am | This Sunday, the Art Theatre in Long Beach will screen Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, one of those rare art documentaries where the art itself is forefront, a particular style of its director Sophie Fiennes.
The documentary follows German-born artist Anselm Kiefer, who left his town of Buchen to move to an 85-acre parcel of land in southern France. He called it La Ribaute, taking on this land sprawl of what used to be an old silk factory and turning it into an enormous atelier of tunnels, sculptures, canvases, burrows, and creative space — and by doing so, became one of the most revered and divisive artists of his time.
Fiennes, who shot the film over the last two years of Kiefer’s 15-year project, is known for her adept approach at somehow making artist and art seamlessly work in tangent instead of dividing the two like many documentarians. Her most known documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, brilliantly followed eccentric philosopher and pop culture junkie Slavoj Žižek in and through cinema — and it seems she has done the same with Kiefer’s apocalyptic approach to space and art.
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow will screen at 12:00pm at the Art Theatre this Sunday. 2025 East 4th Street.