exergue – on documenta 14

Tickets to exergue – on documenta 14 are free, first-come, first-served! Audiences are welcome to attend any portion of the screening.

• Screening across two parts at Howard Gilman Theater, each with a 30-minute intermission:
  • Saturday, Oct. 12, 12pm (Part 1 of 2, 429m)
  • Sun, Oct. 13, 12pm (Part 2 of 2, 479m)

Present politics collide with global contemporary art in this monumental documentary portrait of the making of the controversial 2017 edition of documenta, the influential art exhibition held every five years in the German city of Kassel. Told in a largely vérité style, exergue – on documenta 14 follows the edition’s artistic director Adam Szymczyk and his team of collaborators over two volatile years of inspiration, negotiation, and herculean planning. Presented in 14 chapters, it reveals how the exhibition—wrestling with colonialist legacy and neoliberalism and ambitiously unfolding in both Kassel and Athens—itself became a cultural and political battleground, signaling seismic shifts to come in Europe and beyond. In its breathtaking breadth and specificity, Athiridis’s fully engrossing film is as extensive a look behind the scenes of the contemporary art world as we have ever seen, and a supremely compelling and timely examination of the complex intersections of art, money, and power. Premiere screening in three parts across three days with 15m intermissions; second screening in two parts across two days with 30m intermissions.

All NYFF62 feature documentaries are presented by

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Recommended Film Comment reading:

• Berlinale 2024 Podcast: exergue: on documenta 14
• exergue: on documenta is symbolic of Berlin’s state of affairs
• “The party’s over”: exergue at Berlinale

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