The collection opens with Len Lye's modernist abstraction ‘Tusalava’, which, heavily influenced by Maori and Aboriginal art, shares an interest in ‘primitive’ cultures that was typical of the Modernist movement of the time. It was almost refused a certificate by the puzzled British Board of Censors who suspected that the dancing abstract shapes might be about sex. Lye's own explanation was that it showed the beginnings of organic life. ‘Crossing the Great Sagrada’, is a lowbrow spoof on travel find out more...

A sexually voracious former child star moves into a sleazy Hollywood motel whilst searching for film work. The place is run by a lecherous proprietress and inhabited by various oddballs, all of whom have designs on our hero, Joe. Luckily for everybody he's none too fussy. Low budget Warhol romp. find out more...

Vincent Minelli directs this biopic that, unusually for Hollywood, doesn't subsume the subject's achievements in a fictionalised life-story, explaining one not in terms of the other, but fully celebrating both. Douglas is superb as the artist living on the edge. Not just for art aficionados.

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A powerful and poetic depiction of the great Dutch painter from 1642, the year of the painting of the Night Watch of the Civic Guard and the death of his wife, to his position of social pariah, financial ruin and death in 1669. Rembrandt is an atmospheric and moving film with a truly awesome performance by Charles Laughton in the lead role. find out more...

A remake of Jean Renoir's 1931 film 'La Chienne', this is Hollywood film noir at it's bleakest and most psychologically tortuous. Edward G Robinson plays a middle-class, middle-aged painter who becomes obsessed with an actress-cum-prostitute played by Joan Bennett. An incisive script, haunting score and claustrophobic visuals. find out more...

Supposedly a biography of Michelangelo, it is much more that of Pope Julius II, who, when not on the battlefield uniting Italy, nags Michelangelo, in an engaging and witty script, to speed up his painful work painting the Sistine Chapel, and wonders when he will finsh. The transformation of the chapel ceiling, which was originally dotted with stars, to an opulent statement of high renaissance is engrossing. find out more...

The companion film to Flesh, but now the Dallesandro character has become a down and out junkie on New York's Lower East Side and, rather than his desirable virility, his impotence becomes the central subject of the film. Typical Warhol material. find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...