Our City Dreams (2008)

Chiara Clemente grew up in the arts community of 1980s Manhattan, the daughter of painter Francesco Clemente. She left for awhile to attend college and travel, but then she found herself living back in New York crafting her own artistic life. This film features the city of New York as a creative muse in the lives of artists who move there to pursue their artistic aspirations. She weaves her own story throughout her profiles of five women artists.

Kiki Smith arrived in 1970s after the death of her father, sculptor Tony Smith. She claims that it sparked her need to make art and much of her process has grown around the idea of death in imagery of figures and nature.

Swoon, a generation later, arrived to attend Pratt Institute in the late 1990s and took her drawing and printmaking skills to the street as she created large figurative images on the floor of her small apartment and pasted them on walls all over the city. By 2005 she premiered an installation in the spacious Deitch Projects and was invited the Venice Biennale, where she and a team crafted her wildly assembled floating cities project.

Ghada Amer was born in Cairo, but began working in the city during the 1990s. Gagosian Gallery gave her a 2006 exhibition called Breathe Into Me, featuring drawings and prints of cliche imagery featuring women and exploring themes of pain, desire, torment, absence, romance.

Printmaker, Nancy Spero, and mother of performance art, Marina Abramovic, are also featured in this film that describes the passion behind the artist who chooses to live and work in New York, a place that adds extra difficulty to life and adds essential inspiration and energy.