A contemporary interpretation of the art of Baroque, inspired by the Italian painters of the period. Commissioned by Milan's Festival Delle Lettere and based on a letter about beauty, by Italian actor Vittorio Gassman.

In an associative montage statues of saints in rigid and rapt poses are crosscut with those of real actors until the two can no longer be told apart. Gradually the real bodies break away from the constraints of their wooden models through increasingly improvised dance. A successful act of liberation from convention, which the material celebrates in an ecstasy of multiple exposures and psychedelic colors. – Maya McKechneay

Documentary footage, Hollywood cinema and video games collide, overlap and submerge into each other in a Dadaist collage inspired by the poetry of Hungarian poet Mário Z. Nemes. The hypermedia nature of the present is emphasised by fragments that are free of a clear narrative backbone.

A contemporary take on the 17th-century genre of the pastiche, this delightful Baroque fantasy brings together some of the greatest arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, and other composers with a new English libretto by Jeremy Sams, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The all-star cast is headed by David Daniels as Prospero, Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, Luca Pisaroni as Caliban, and the legendary Plácido Domingo as Neptune. Early music specialist William Christie conducts this dazzling world-premiere production, designed and directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch.

Featurette from the Opus Arte DVD of Les Paladins by Jean-Philippe Rameau staged at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris, 2004.

STATEMENT Here and now In the film Balkan Baroque, one has the impression that the character invents the past as she speaks, here and now. This past seems to have no reality outside the moment it is evoked with the force that is characteristic of film work. Here, in Balkan Baroque, it has become the present, the present of the film unwinding before the viewer's eyes. What we see on the screen is in the process of happening-it is the very gesture that is given to us and not a report on it. The universe of the film is given in a perpetual present. In other words, this biography of Marina Abramovic, which implies a number of past things, is in process of unfolding before our eyes, here and now, as we watch Balkan Baroque. 'Elsewhere' and 'formerly' do not exist. There is no longer a true reality, inherent and external to the film, so there is no longer anything but the sole reality of the projected images. The film, the universe that it reveals, suffices by itself, at every instant, erasing itself as it goes along, within a loop that is literally never-ending. We are therefore dealing with a subjective, mental unwinding. The work Balkan Baroque is not account of an exterior reality; it is its own reality. The only time to be considered for this biography is the projection time (63'). Balkan Baroque is pure fiction, an imaginary production in which Marina Abramovic plays different roles, including the role of the artist doing performances.

……关于巴洛克风格。弗朗切斯科·博罗米尼（Francesco Borromini）是巴洛克时期罗马真正的大师，以其无与伦比的天赋闻名，他彻底革新了建筑艺术。这部纪录片讲述了他的故事。

Waldemar Januszczak带你领略巴洛克艺术传统。