Screening: Loving Vincent

The Avalon Theater The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, DC and The Polish Cultural Institute New York present:

Loving Vincent 
By Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman

Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 8:00 PM 
Tickets: $12.5 general; $10 students, seniors; $8.25 members

The Avalon Theater 
5612 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC Tel: 202-966-6000

Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully painted feature film. Written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, produced by Poland’s BreakThru Films and the UK’s Trademark Films.

The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from all across the world to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production. Van Gogh’s brilliant paintings are as remarkable as his passionate and ill-fated life, and mysterious death.

Few artists have such legendary status as Vincent van Gogh. Variously labelled a martyr, a lustful satyr, a madman, a genius and a layabout, the real Van Gogh is at once revealed in his letters, and obscured by myth and time. Van Gogh himself said in his last letter: “We cannot speak other than by our paintings.” We take him at his word and let the paintings tell the real story of Vincent van Gogh.

Loving Vincent was first shot as a live action film with actors, and then hand-painted over, frame-by-frame, in oils. The final effect is an interaction of the performers enacting Van Gogh’s famous portraits, and the performance of the painting animators, bringing these characters into the medium of paint.

Pamela Bliss, one of the artists who painted the film, will be present at the screening and will talk about the process of creating the film.