Checkerboard Film Foundation (Firm)

Checkerboard Film Foundation is a non-profit documentary film production company founded in 1979. With a mission that is both educational and archival, Checkerboard documents living artists who have made important contributions to the American arts. Checkerboard's films represent a visual time capsule of artistic achievements spanning the last half-Century.

This intimate portrait of modern jazz pianist, Barry Harris, becomes a historic walk with some of the best-known jazz musicians of the 1950's and 60's. Memorable scenes span from archival footage of Harris playing at his piano to more recent reminiscing about his circle of friends and influences, such as Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Dubbed the "key conservator" of bebop music by Gary Giddins, Jazz Critic for The...

One of the first American women artists to earn an international reputation, Grace Hartigan was a member of the small group of New York Abstract Expressionist painters who helped move the art world center from Paris to New York. Her work is in nearly every major museum in the country-in fact the first painting she ever sold was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline were among her close friends and...

For the first time in history, women are creating some of the most exciting architectural designs in the world. How have they navigated their way to the top? What is the nature of their creative process? Are there gender differences in architectural design? Making Space is a 1-hour documentary film about five dynamic and accomplished female architects-all rising stars in what has been an all-male galaxy-: Annabelle Selldorf (New York), Marianne McKenna...

The celebrated art historian John Richardson has devoted his life to writing the definitive biography of Pablo Picasso. This film captures Richardson as he is writing the fourth and final volume of his biography. He shares his insights and observations on this period in Picasso's life, whom Richardson first met in the 1950s, with Shelley Wagner, his editor at Penguin Random House.. We are given intimate tours of the three groundbreaking exhibitions...

The film features artist Frank Stella as he walks us through his 2012 exhibition "Black Aluminum Copper Paintings" at L&M Arts. The film also features commentary on Frank's life and career from Adam Weinberg (Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY) and Ann Temkin (Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, NY).