12 Days: Highlights of 2015

Over the 12 days of Christmas, Apollo contributors and invited guests select their anticipated highlights of 2015

View the 12 Days series here

I’ve been looking forward to Eugène Green’s new film, La Sapienza, since it screened at the Locarno film festival. The premise is as contrived as you would expect from this film-maker: a frustrated French architect goes to Italy in search of Borromini and the baroque. But Green is a master of turning pretentious scenarios into witty and thoughtful films that are beautiful to look at. La Sapienza doesn’t have an UK distributor, but I’m still hoping for a run at the ICA or the Ciné Lumière in 2015.

The film-maker Ben Rivers has been darting between the white cube and the dark screening-room for some time now, capturing quiet places and people with his Bolex camera. Camden Arts Centre is very good at both of these environments (the ‘cinema’ for Moyra Davey’s video work stood out in 2014), and it will be a useful chance to look at his now substantial body of work.

Frederick Wiseman’s documentary about the National Gallery is unlike any of the films he’s made in the last 40 years. It’s almost as if the greatest living observer of institutions has decided that the single most interesting thing about this museum is its collection.

Still from ‘National Gallery’ (2014) Image © Frederick Wiseman, courtesy Soda Pictures/Zipporah Films

Event Details

Ben Rivers will exhibit at the Camden Arts Centre, London, from 25 September–29 November.

National Gallery is released in cinemas in the UK from 9 January.

View the rest of the 12 Days series here.