Director Jef Cornelis made more than 200 films in over 30 years that he worked for Belgian broadcaster BRT. Many addressed the visual arts, especially his initial works before the early 1970s. In 1968, Cornelis made one of his films about documenta 4 in Kassel. Many of the key players at the time have an opportunity to comment in the film, such as documenta founder Arnold Bode and Jean Leering, the young director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, who had been appointed to the documenta Advisory Council to help rejuvenate the exhibition. In addition, the film shows art critics such as Pierre Restany, gallery owner Denise René, and curator Harald Szeemann, who was at the helm of the following documenta 5 in 1972. Above all, however, Cornelis gave artists participating a chance to have their say.

Impressions of the exhibition being set up are captured in the film along with the controversies sparked by documenta 4. In one-to-one interviews with Christo, Joseph Beuys, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Rauschenberg, Cornelis focused on some specific voices in the exhibition. These conversations with the artists also reveal their underlying approaches, methods and, in some cases, production contexts. A nuanced picture of the mood emerges, as Cornelis also captures how disgruntled some artists felt. Over and above obvious sources of strife, such as arguments about better placement and purported preferential treatment, the overarching fault lines of the era also become visible, emerging above all in relation to politicization of art. Where some advocated arguing in the narrower political sense and jockeying for position, others tended instead to deploy smoothly ironic and sometimes subtly critical affirmations.

Broader structural challenges repeatedly emerge clearly too, for instance the impossibility of defining water-tight criteria when evaluating emerging and contemporary art coupled with the ensuing precarious status of decisions to invite particular artists, the changing role played by museums, persistent criticism of certain practices as too market-friendly, and the influence of the art market more generally. Many of these points sound astonishingly topical. Cornelis’ film provides a unique time document, deploying artistic production and its presentation to render the period’s conflicting positions and burning issues tangible.