Artists and Their Portrayal on Screen

Complementing the exhibition, the Filmmuseum Potsdam (Breite Str. 1a, 14467 Potsdam) presents a film series exploring artists and the ways in which cinema has portrayed them. Spanning more than a century of film history, the series ranges from Sacha Guitry’s early cinematic portrait Ceux de chez nous (1915) to such classics as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso (1956), films such as Loving Vincent (2017), and contemporary portraits of artists, including Sleeping with a Tiger (2024), about Maria Lassnig, and Corinna Belz’s documentary Gerhard Richter Painting (2011). Documentary, narrative, and animated films offer distinct perspectives on artistic processes, personal trajectories, and the enduring myth of the artist.

Thursday, December 10, 2026 | 6:00 p.m.Filmmuseum Potsdam
Ceux de chez nous
Director: Sacha Guitry, France 1915, documentary, 21 min.
Sacha Guitry once described his ambition in making this film as dreaming of a new kind of encyclopedia. True to his own rather particular taste, he brings together some of the most eminent figures in French cultural life of the period—including Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Sarah Bernhardt, Edgar Degas, and Auguste Renoir—and captures them, for the most part, at work.
A fascinating aside: The young boy seen behind Auguste Renoir in one scene is Claude Renoir, the painter’s younger son and the fourteen-year-old brother of Jean Renoir, who would later become a celebrated filmmaker. Jean, already twenty-one at the time of filming, had by then been wounded in the war.
Introduction: Dr. Johanne Hoppe, film scholar

Thursday, December 10, 2026 | 7:00 p.m.
Filmmuseum Potsdam
Renoir
Director: Gilles Bourdos
Cast: Michel Bouquet, Christa Théret, Vincent Rottiers
France 2012, original version with German subtitles, 111 min.
The painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) is portrayed in the twilight of his life. Having withdrawn to a country estate, he is surrounded by an unconventional extended household of family members, domestic staff, models, and former lovers, and continues to paint outdoors. His most important muse is the young Andrée, with whom his son Jean—the future filmmaker—falls in love upon returning from the war to recuperate at the estate. Somewhat restrained in its approach, the film unfolds in the summer of 1915—the very year Ceux de chez nous was released.

Friday, December 18, 2026 | 7:00 p.m.
Filmmuseum Potsdam
Sleeping with a Tiger (Mit einem Tiger schlafen)
Director: Anja Salomonowitz
Cast: Birgit Minichmayr, Johanna Orsini, Maria Nicolini
Austria 2024, 107 min.
In a male-dominated art world, the Austrian avant-garde artist Maria Lassnig had to struggle for recognition for many years. Today, she is regarded as one of the most important women painters of the twentieth century.
This poetic biographical feature film traces Lassnig’s search for a distinctly personal artistic language, portraying her relationship with painting as an intensely physical struggle. Surreal, performative, and documentary elements repeatedly rupture the film’s fictional framework. The result is a singular contribution to the artist biopic, told from a feminist perspective.

Friday, January 8, 2027 | 7:00 p.m.
Filmmuseum Potsdam
The Mystery of Picasso (Le Mystère Picasso)
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
France 1956, documentary, original version with German subtitles, 78 min.
In 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot set out, together with his friend Pablo Picasso, to make a film unlike any other: “a film capable of capturing the moment—and the mystery—of artistic creation.”
The result is an extraordinary cinematic portrait of an artist that has itself since become a classic. Clouzot places particular emphasis on Picasso’s physical expressiveness and the gestural language of his painting. Before the camera, Picasso creates playful black-and-white drawings and vibrant oil paintings, which unfold before our eyes over the course of just a few minutes through the use of stop-motion animation.
Remarkably, most of the works were destroyed once filming was complete, in order to preserve their uniqueness for the film project.

Friday, January 15, 2027 | 7:00 p.m.
Filmmuseum Potsdam
Loving Vincent
Directors: Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman
UK/Poland 2017, animated feature, original version with German subtitles, 95 min.
Young Armand Roulin, the son of the postmaster of Arles, is entrusted by his father with delivering a letter from the painter Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo. By this time, the artist has been dead for a year, having taken his own life. When Armand discovers that Theo, too, died just six months after Vincent, he sets out to question those who knew van Gogh during his lifetime in an effort to uncover the circumstances surrounding his death. Could it, after all, have been something other than suicide? For Loving Vincent, 125 artists created 65,000 individual frames. It is the first feature-length film in the history of cinema to have been painted entirely in oil. Eschewing any sensationalism in its treatment of the artist’s life, the filmmakers have crafted a deeply empathetic portrait that unfolds like an ingenious detective story. Its sole sources are van Gogh’s paintings and his extensive correspondence.

Friday, February 12, 2027 | 7:00 p.m.
Filmmuseum Potsdam
Gerhard Richter Painting
Director: Corinna Belz
Germany 2011, documentary, 101 min.
From April to September 2009, filmmaker Corinna Belz was granted access to Gerhard Richter’s studio, where she documented the creation of a series of large-scale abstract paintings. The film offers an extraordinarily intimate view of the artistic process, revealing the role played by chance, experimentation, and the ever-present possibility of failure.
Richter is also accompanied beyond the studio, into the public arena of the art market. His reflections on his own work and practice offer fascinating insights into his intellectual and artistic world.
Preceded by the short film: In the Studio: Gerhard Richter (In der Werkstatt. Gerhard Richter), Director: Hannes Reinhardt, Germany 1969, documentary, 14 min.

Special Admission Offer
Upon presentation of an admission ticket to the Museum Barberini, visitors are entitled to reduced admission to the films listed above at the Filmmuseum Potsdam. Conversely, presentation of a ticket to any of these film screenings entitles visitors to reduced admission to the exhibition The Impressionists. Monet, Morisot, Renoir, and Their Network at the Museum Barberini.

Filmmuseum Potsdam, Breite Str. 1a, 14467 Potsdam, Germany
Ticket reservations: +49 (0)331 27181-12, ticket@filmmuseum-potsdam.de