Here’s a bucket list for you. 131 readers applied for free Finding Vivian Maier DVDs in our March newsletter, and told us the names of their favourite documentary portraits of artists. We promised that the answers wouldn’t influence the draw, and we were true to our word: one of the lucky winners had nominated Formula One superhero Senna. You won’t find that, or Herzog’s extraordinary Grizzly Man, also named, on the list below. We’ve also subtracted several dramatised portraits (out you go, Ken Russell), two titles we feared had been made up to fool us, and a few films so new we’re still checking them out ourselves for NZIFF 2015. Italicised films all had their New Zealand premieres at NZIFF or one of its previous incarnations. Most surprising absence: Martin Scorsese’s brilliant Dylan doco, No Direction Home.



1) Bill Cunningham New York (13 nominations)

2) Exit Through the Gift Shop (8)

3) Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry; Crumb
; Salt of the Earth (6 each)
6) Finding Vivian Maier (4)

7) In the Realms of the Unreal; Searching for Sugar Man; The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo; Eames: The Architect & The Painter (3 each)

Two nominations
Waste Land
Sol LeWitt
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Herb & Dorothy
Burden of Dreams
Don’t Look Back
Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death
Dad's in Heaven with Nixon
The Mona Lisa Curse

One nomination
20,000 Days on Earth
A Portrait of Pat Carey
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens
Ans Westra: Private Journeys, Public Signposts
Ansel Adams
Being Elmo
Bertolucci on Bertolucci
Black Sun
Crazy Horse
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
Dior and I
Distinctly Grahame Sydney
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones
Genghis Blues
George Harrison: Living in a Material World
Gimme Shelter
Gregory Crewdson Brief Encounters
Guest of Cindy Sherman
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
My Best Fiend
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter
In Search of Beethoven
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Jodorowky's Dune
Lost In La Mancha
Lovely Rita
Man on Wire
Michael Smither: The Next Ten Years
Muscle Shoals
Picasso and Braque Go the Movies
Pictures of Susan
Pina
Pretty As a Picture: The Art of David Lynch
Red, White and Blues
The Buena Vista Social Club
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
The Punk Singer
The Woodmans
War Photographer
Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
Year of the Horse