Hockney 2014

The art and unbridled personality of acclaimed British artist David Hockney are brought to vivid life in Randall Wright’s treatise on the man's memorable and influential career and personal history. Intimate and insightful, the portrait delves deeply to reveal a charismatic rebel, still searching for new ways of seeing, whose passion for art remains intense, and whose wry sense of humour still shines through. Best of all, his recent art shows it, and is as good as anything he's ever done. Encompassing a bracing mix of archival footage - to see him spin around a dance floor at the Royal College of Art in the 1950s is to see energy incarnate - stories from friends, models and the artist himself, as well as a consideration of the art and its progression from his early drawings and paintings, through his experiments with theatre and photography, to his more recent iPad imagery, the film offers a great appreciation of Hockney’s life and philosophy. And nothing in his eventful life goes unremarked: from swinging-60s London to New York's contemporary art boom, to his life in Los Angeles and the horrible memories from the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, when he lost more than half of his friends, it’s all here...