F for Fake

Sep 1, 1973

1h 29m

★ 7.4

A magician is just an actor playing the part of a magician.

Overview

Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

SACI

Les Films de l'Astrophore

Janus Film und Fernsehen

F for Fake Trailers

Cast

Self

Orson Welles

The Girl

Oja Kodar

Self

Elmyr de Hory

Self

Clifford Irving

Self

Laurence Harvey

Self

Edith Irving

Self

David Walsh

Self

Paul Stewart

Self

Richard Wilson

Self

Joseph Cotten

Self (archive footage)

Howard Hughes

Self

Richard Drewett

For years, artist Drew Friedman has chronicled a strange, alternate universe populated by forgotten Hollywood stars, old Jewish comedians and liver-spotted elevator operators. Drew Friedman: Vermeer of the Borscht Belt is an in-depth documentary tracing artist Friedman's evolution from underground comics to the cover of The New Yorker. The film, directed by Kevin Dougherty, features interviews with Friedman's friends and colleagues, including Gilbert Gottfried, Patton Oswalt, Richard Kind, Mike Judge, Merrill Markoe and many others.

No Image Available

5.0

Janine F.

Feb 1, 2005

The humorous portrait of a female artist. The film follows the career of 24-year-old Janine F. who in 2002 caused a commotion from the rooftop of a Berlin building.

7.3

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405

Oct 14, 2016

56-year-old artist Mindy Alper has suffered severe depression and anxiety for most of her life. For a time she even lost the power of speech, and it was during this period that her drawings became extraordinarily articulate.

0.0

Constable: A Country Rebel

Sep 7, 2014

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

8.0

Covid, le secret des origines

Mar 30, 2025

No overview available.

9.0

Im Reich Des Squatters

Apr 20, 2020

No overview available.

7.0

FFG: un retrato

Jan 1, 1976

An experimental portrait of Fernando Fernán Gómez, one of the most renowned Spanish artists of all time.

0.0

Panoramas

Nov 29, 2019

In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.

No Image Available

0.0

New Hyperion or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood

Apr 6, 1992

From the behavior, discourse, and appearance of individual actors, Vachek composes, in the form of a mosaic, a broad and many-layered film-argument about Czechoslovak democracy in the period of its rebirth, all administered with the director’s inimitable point of view.

7.1

Linklater: On Cinema and Time

Dec 4, 2013

If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his films, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. A visual essay produced by Sight and Sound.

0.0

Hockney, The Queen and the Royal Peculiar

Oct 9, 2018

David Hockney undertakes a commission to design and install a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the sixty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

4.8

The Maestro Rides Again!

Jan 1, 2005

Les Blank continued filming the Maestro after the original film “The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists” was completed. Here are the Maestro’s latest creations and more on his uncompromising philosophy of art and life.

0.0

Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde

Apr 9, 1997

Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.

7.1

Arcadia

Oct 8, 2017

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.

0.0

Donosti 2730

Mar 16, 2024

A youngster writes a letter to his grandmother about his last trip to Donosti (Spain). This city inspires him to ponder about the language of cinema, time, cities, and sharing memories with our loved ones.

6.5

The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography

Jan 6, 1998

Every image in The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography comes from gay erotic videos produced in Eastern Europe since the introduction of capitalism. The video provides a glimpse of young men responding to the pressures of an unfamiliar world, one in which money, power and sex are now connected.

0.0

This is Not a Game

Jun 25, 2021

Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers is the last remaining person to upload her consciousness to a video game. Contemplating during a pandemic year which also saw people’s resistance movements in many parts of the world, the work pinpoints the uncanny affinities between gaming and warfare strategies. They have mutually informed the infrastructure of both worlds since time immemorial when diplomatic conflicts played out on the battlefield of the 64 squares of a chess board to flight simulation technologies which were adapted to shape gaming experiences as we know it now. When the conflict is between the state and its people, she speculates that gaming strategies empower civilians in resistance movements to counter imperialism through its own operative logic. But once we upload our consciousness, are we able to return to the sensibilities and political motivation that inspired the revolution to begin with?

0.0

Pivetta

Oct 18, 2021

No overview available.

0.0

Black Is the Color: African-American Artists and Segregation

Jul 7, 2016

Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.

6.9

Jesus Christ Saviour

May 15, 2008

Klaus Kinski has perhaps the most ferocious reputation of all screen actors: his volatility was documented to electrifying effect in Werner Herzog’s 1999 portrait My Best Fiend. This documentary provides further fascinating insight into the talent and the tantrums of the great man. Beset by hecklers, Kinski tries to deliver an epic monologue about the life of Christ (with whom he perhaps identifies a little too closely). The performance becomes a stand-off, as Kinski fights for control of the crowd and alters the words to bait his tormentors. Indispensable for Kinski fans, and a riveting introduction for newcomers, this is a unique document, which Variety called ‘a time capsule of societal ideals and personal demons.’