The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins (2007)

Director:

Pietra Brettkelly

Writer:

Pietra Brettkelly (writer)

Plot:

Vanessa Beecroft is obsessively determined to adopt Sudanese twin orphans. Her consuming passion drives...

Plot Keywords:

Twins

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Jeffrey Deitch	...	Jeffrey Deitch
Greg Durkin	...	Greg Durkin

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

New Zealand

Certification:

Canada:PG (British Columbia/Ontario)

Interesting documentary.

During the COPENHAGEN DOX festival i went to see this not knowing what it was about. I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation of the themes in this documentary. The story revolves around the concept artist Vanessa Beecroft and her plans of adopting two Sudanese twin kids. Vanessa Beecroft is an artist who has been known for staging art shows with naked people in groups standing up for so long in a room that eventually the models get tired and sits down one by one. On one of her projects in Sudan, she comes across two children she wants to adopt. The mother is dead, and the father does not have money for raising them. The documentary partly follows the process of Vanessas struggle for adopting the children, and partly (for the most part) it is also the story of the eccentric artist that Vanessa Beecroft is. The viewer is presented to fragments from Vanessas art shows, stories from her husband, mother, and father, how she works within the art world, and so on. The more we get to know about Vanessa, the more interesting it becomes. Vanessa turns out to be a very flimsy person whose eccentric fits makes her create chaotic situations where she goes. And she does it intentionally. Apparently she is an artist that thinks that creativeness comes from chaos. I will not reveal more about this documentary, but just say it is an interesting way of portraying a person. At the screening, the director of the movie was there, and it was very nice to get some further background information about the doc. That talk was a nice supplement to the film. As the film actually leaves a lot of questions unanswered. But it is actually not the purpose of the film to answer everything, but just to state that we are dealing with some complicated issues that involves a complicated person.