When you think of an art film, you usually think of something with subtitles, directed by Bergman. How about an actual art film you know, something about art and the artists who make it? The film archives at The Menil Collection are replete with art movies of every stripe, as todays 90-minute al fresco sampler of goodies, Menil Movies: Cinematic Works from the Menil Archives, demonstrates. There are interviews with Buckminster Fuller and Marcel Duchamp, rare interviews with the great Man Ray, and Robert Wilsons weirdly surreal, and short, video sketchbooks. Theres also footage of rifle-wielding feminist sculptor Niki De Saint Phalle creating one of her shooting paintings and visiting a junkyard (some scenes were shot by François de Menil). Todays presentation, a collection of highlights from the archive, is a launch for the Menil Movies series, which continues in the fall. 8:30 p.m. 1515 Sul Ross. For information, call 713-525-9400 or visit www.menil.org. Free.
Sat., June 13, 8:30 p.m., 2009