Cinema Now

The End of Fear

The End of Fear

A multi-layered film about contemporary art and the murder of a painting is based on the event which happened in 1986 in the Amsterdam museum Stedelijk: a man, who stabbed a famous painting called Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III by the icon of the abstract expressionism, Barnett Newman. Was he trying to destroy the contemporary art? The real death of this piece of art came after the failed restoration, destroying it for good.

The visual artist Barbara Visser follows this case and uncovers our complicated relationship towards the contemporary art. The film questions the character of the art, the uniqueness of the piece and its economic, artistic and social value.

  • Year:
    2018
  • Runtime:
    70 min.
  • Country:
    Netherlands
  • Director:
    Barbara Visser
  • Dir. of Photography:
    Niels van Koevorden
  • Music:
    Juho Nurmela
  • Editor:
    Xander Nijsten
  • Production:
    De Familie Film & TV
  • Sales:
    CAT&Docs
  • Festivals:
    Rotterdam 2018, CPH:DOX 2018, Open City Docs London 2018, Hot Docs 2018, Thessaloniki 2018, New Horizons Wroclaw 2018

About the Director:

Barbara Visser

(1966, Haarlem, Netherlands) is a visual artist, dealing with the questions of representation, the relationship between the original work and copy and the depiction of historic and cultural narratives in art, design and science. Between 2016 and 2018, she was the head of the IDFA festival.