SEPT 11 SAT 4:30 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM—VISITING ARTISTS
RUNNING FENCE
US 1976
DIRECTORS: DAVID AND ALBERT MAYSLES, CHARLOTTE ZWERIN Taking the experience of “Valley Curtain” (see Sept 12) and expanding on it, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s next major project was “Running Fence,” an 18-foot high white nylon curtain fence that ran 24 miles across the undulating Sonoma and Marin county hills in Northern California before plunging into the sea. Wryly capturing the multiple points of view on the definition of art, artists, creativity, perception, values, bureaucracy and the American political process, the Maysles document all phases of the ephemeral project with delightful results. “Twentieth-century art is not a single individual experience. It is the very deep political, social and economic experience I live right now with everybody here.”—Christo. (58 mins.) Christo and Jeanne-Claude will INTRODUCE the film.

SEPT 12 SUN 4 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
CHRISTO’S VALLEY CURTAIN
US 1973
DIRECTORS: DAVID AND ALBERT MAYSLES, ELLEN HOVDE GIFFARD Five hundred feet high and a quarter-mile long, the bright orange curtain strung across Rife Gap, Colorado, capture the imagination of arts and non-art audiences in a way no work before it ever had. Unfurled only briefly before the wind ripped it away, the intertwined process and product of this artistic and engineering feat was captured by the Maysles with savvy zest. (27 mins.)
WITH
CHRISTO AND JEANNE CLAUDE
US 1995
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL BLACKWOOD Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris in 1958, beginning an extraordinary partnership that reached its climax with the wrapping of the Reichstag (the German parliament) in Berlin in June 1995. In Blackwood’s portrait, the indefatigable duo reviews all of their main projects since 1958 beginning with the wrapped objects and discussing in detail the struggle to obtain permission for the "Wrapped Reichstag,” which took more than 20 years to realize. (58 mins.)

SEPT 19 SUN 1 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
UMBRELLAS
US 1995
DIRECTORS: HENRY CORRA, GRAHAME WEINBREN, ALBERT MAYSLES For “Umbrellas: Joint Project for Japan and U.S.A, 1984–91,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose sites with contrasting cultures: a farming valley in the Japanese province of lbaraki and a cluster of cattle ranches in the rolling hills of southern California. In October 1991, 1,340 blue umbrellas unfurled in the dense green foliage in Japan. Across the ocean, 1,760 yellow umbrellas burst open on dry, golden-colored grass. UMBRELLAS candidly presents the compelling personal reactions to a tragic death at the California site. Later, during the removal of the umbrellas, an electrical storm took the life of a Japanese construction worker. Like life itself, Christo's art has, in his own words, "a profound dimension of irrationality." (90 mins.)

SEPT 26 SUN 4 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
CHRISTO IN PARIS
US 1990
DIRECTORS: ALBERT AND DAVID MAYSLES, DEBORAH DICKENSON, SUSAN FROMKE Christo and Jeanne-Claude 's first grand-scale urban project wrapped the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, with more than 440,000 square yards of golden sandstone fabric while attracting more than three million visitors during its brief two-week life. The filmmakers gracefully use the same bridge (where Christo first courted Jeanne-Claude 30 years earlier) to tell a pair of vivid love stories—one between a refugee artist and a French General's daughter, and one between a 400-year-old bridge and the people of Paris. (60 mins.)

OCT 3 SUN 4:30 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
WRAPPED REICHSTAG
GERMANY 1997
DIRECTORS: WOLFRAM HISSEN AND JORG DANIEL HISSEN “Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971–95,” the most ambitious of the artists' wrapped buildings, represented perhaps the greatest challenge and achievement in Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s career. The Hissen Brothers follow the 24 years of vision, planning and execution it took to wrap this symbol of German democracy, a feat that took 54 visits to Germany, more than a million square feet of fabric, 51,000 feet of rope and the skill of 90 professional climbers and other equally mind-boggling marshalling. (98 mins.)

OCT 10 SUN 4 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
ISLANDS
US 1986
DIRECTORS: DAVID AND ALBERT MAYSLES, CHARLOTTE ZWERIN Considered their most painterly project for its planarity, “Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83,” involved floating 6.5 million square feet of bright pink woven polypropylene fabric on the water around 11 islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay. Thwarted by hostile bureaucrats who attempted to stop their project at every turn, Christo speaks eloquently of the time-related nature of their works that gives it an urgency not found in museum exhibits and about art as “experience” rather than “product.” (57 mins.) With CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE (See September 12 for details)