This November and December, Laemmle’s Culture Vulture series celebrates the visual arts with four films that illuminate the power, passion, and mystery of painting. Continuing the series’ mission to bring world-class art and performance to the big screen, these films invite audiences to experience the creative process in all its beauty and turbulence. Click here to stay abreast of upcoming showtimes and other releases in the Culture Vulture series.
Caravaggio (November 15–17) begins the series with a luminous exploration of one of history’s most tempestuous geniuses. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a man of extremes—revered and reviled, visionary and violent—and the film dives into those contradictions with cinematic flair. His revolutionary use of light and shadow transformed the sacred image into something startlingly human, while his personal demons gave his art an intensity still unmatched four centuries later. Through historical insight and breathtaking recreations, Caravaggio evokes the audacity of an artist who painted faith through flesh and divinity through imperfection.
The following weekend turns from the Renaissance to the present with Francisco Letelier: I Write Your Name (November 22–24), a stirring documentary about the Chilean-American muralist and activist. The son of slain diplomat Orlando Letelier, Francisco channels his personal tragedy into monumental works that reclaim memory and community. Filmed across the Americas, the documentary traces his journey as he uses art to confront loss, celebrate resilience, and honor the silenced. It’s a testament to painting as a public act: one capable of turning grief into beauty and protest into permanence.
Paint Me a Road Out of Here (November 29–December 1) turns its gaze to the transformative power of art as activism. Director Catherine Gund follows the hidden history of Faith Ringgold’s 1971 painting For the Women’s House, a sprawling portrayal of women in professions once denied to them. Originally installed at Rikers Island, the work was later painted over, hidden, and ultimately restored and rehung at the Brooklyn Museum. The film traces the painting’s fifty-year journey, interweaving Ringgold’s pioneering voice with fellow artist and prison reform advocate Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter’s firsthand experience of incarceration and creative release. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, this documentary shows how art built for the margins went on to expose the systemic erasure of women’s narratives—and asks what happens when those stories finally find a home.
The series concludes with Painting the Soul of the 20th Century: Pellizza Da Volpedo (December 13–15), offering an intimate portrait of the divisionist painter whose masterpiece The Fourth Estate became an emblem of social awakening and collective dignity. Moving through the landscapes and villages that shaped Pellizza’s original vision, the documentary mirrors the artist’s own pursuit of balance between art and ethics, solitude and society. With a visual language inspired by the meticulous brushwork and prismatic hues of its subject’s canvases, Painting the Soul of the 20th Century transforms biography into meditation, revealing an artist who painted not just people, but the spirit of an age.
Together, these four films offer an immersive journey through centuries of artistic vision, reminding us why painting remains one of humanity’s most enduring forms of expression. Laemmle’s Culture Vulture continues to bridge the worlds of stage, gallery, and screen, bringing audiences closer to the heart of creation itself.