There's something for everybody at this year's San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, including the fascinating Art For Everybody, a feature about populist painter Thomas Kinkade, the self-proclaimed Painter of Light' whose cheery Rockwell-style landscapes adorned countless calendars, collectible plates, and living room walls throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Miranda Yousef's film introduces us to some of these detractors and a few admirers, including irascible counterculture animator Ralph Bakshi (who gave the 20-something Kinkade one of his first jobs) and infiltration artist' Jeffrey Vallance.
We also see Kinkade's four daughters come to terms with their father's surprising legacy, a vast trove of deeply personal (and far from populist) works locked away until after his passing in 2005.
If, like me, you're the sort of person who cringes at the sight of emulsion being scraped from nitrate film, you're really going to appreciate Film Is Dead. Long Live Film!. Directed by Peter Flynn, it's a loving tribute to a dying breed: men (almost always men!) of a certain age who've spent decades hoarding canisters of decaying and (in many cases) unique or irreplaceable film.
#san-francisco-documentary-film-festival #thomas-kinkade #art-legacy #film-preservation #mid-20th-century-kitsch
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