How you can participate
In addition to producing full-length, broadcast-quality documentary films and videotaping living artists and environments, the Foundation actively researches and collects existing films, videos, raw footage, and images of artworks about self-taught American artists.
We need your help! Donations of material for immediate use on this website and for future inclusion in Foundation produced films would be welcome. Outright gifts—of film and video (finished and raw footage), audio, digital images, artists' portraits, and links to relevant websites—will help the Foundation fulfill its mission and provide an important resource for the many scholars, curators, collectors, advocates, and champions of this important area of artistic achievement. For more information, please contact info@FoundationSTAART.org.
Other films we recommend:
Grandma’s Bottle Village
Grandma Tressa Prisbrey built her first bottle house to hold her 17,000 pencils. This was the beginning of The Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California. Interviewed at age 84, Grandma Prisbrey is a vivacious guide to her brilliant houses crammed with objects scavenged from the county dump. The film is an exploration of her creativity, pizzazz, and sense of the absurd. The film lovingly documents the interiors of 15 of her houses and sidewalk mosaics—all masterpieces of assemblage and tapestries of artifacts. One of Light-Saraf Films most popular titles, Grandma’s Bottle Village is also part of their compilation DVD Visions of Paradise.
About this film
About Bottle Village
The Cats of Mirikitani
Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing powers of friendship and art, this documentary won the Audience Award at its premiere in the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.
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Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle
Painter, fisherman, visionary, eccentric—Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity, at an isolated bait camp off the East Coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City (along with artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). But Bess's art was only part of a grander theory, based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals, which proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. Narrated by actors Willem Dafoe and Ruth Maleczech the documentary combines the beauty of Bess's art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Interviews with people who knew Bess, including art historian Meyer Schapiro (his last interview) and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman bring life to this forgotten artist. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle is a fascinating look at one of America's most unusual artists. Producer-director: Chuck Smith. Director & camera: Ari Marcopoulos, 2000, color/b&w, 48 minutes.
About this film