Films by Eli Cortiñas

Germany 2011, 79 min
by Mareike Wegener

A few weeks after 9/11, an FBI agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark Lombardi. Just months earlier, the artist was found dead in his studio. Although the official cause of death was documented as a suicide, there were many doubts. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper, Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and international terrorism. This documentary is a dense portrait of Lombardi‘s life and work that examines how art can express universal truths that are reflected in our present.

Germany 2008
by Mareike Wegener

On June 19th, 1995, New York born artist Al Hansen died in his studio in Cologne. It wasn't unusual for Hansen to disappear, and his body lay there until some time later. He was found under his desk, smothered in what many consider trash but what he called working materials. He was 67 years old, and working on a collage made out of matchsticks. "Al Hansen – The Matchstick Traveller" portrays an artist who was everything at once: beat poet, pop artist, performer, Fluxus artist, author, porn editor, actor, composer, punk band manager - an axis for all post war movements, and still an outcast. The film looks back at his chaotic life, and examines the notion of failure. The Matchstick Traveller is a documentary collage that interweaves remarkable archival footage with the thoughts and memories of those who were there, featuring appearances by daughter Bibbe Hansen, Fluxus artists Ben Vautier, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Geoffrey Hendricks, the Vienna Actionist Hermann Nitsch, as well as friends and family.