This week I wanted to talk about a movie that’s coming out called “Loving Vincent”. The movie aims to explore Vincent van Gogh’s life through his paintings. The best part about the movie is it’s the first ever full length film entirely hand painted with oil paints.

Image from http://www.lovingvincent.com

For the entire movie they’ve created over 65,000 frames each painstakingly painted to match van Gogh’s style. The director, Dorota Kobiela, had trained as a painter but also worked in film. She was inspired by van Gogh’s letters and decided to combine the two. She believes you cannot tell his story without his paintings. So, she came up with their own process of shooting live action with actors and then having over 100 painters, who could stay true to his style, create the frames. It took four years to create the process and over two years to complete the film.

The painters came from all over the world to join Dorota and her team in three different studios. They painted the frames on over 1,000 canvas boards that measure 40 1/2″ by 23 2/3″. Each shot had their own canvas and the would continue to paint over it frame by frame until the shot was finished. They’ve recreated many of van Gogh’s paintings, changing what needed to be changed. Some of the paintings are parts of his life that could not be told through his work. To accomplish this, Dorota came up with the idea of flashbacks in grayscale. 200 of the paintings from the film will be for sale in the coming years.

Image from http://www.lovingvincent.com

An exhibition will open October 13th in the Noord Brabants Museum featuring the paintings from the film and the movie is set to release in select theaters in the U.S . starting September 22.

More information can be found on their website (link). To watch the trailer click here.

I really love the idea behind this movie and I cannot wait to see it. The details look amazing and I cannot think of a better way to tell van Gogh’s story than through oil paints.

“The reason we made the film is not because we want to be the first, or that we want to set any records, it is because we believe that you cannot truly tell Vincent’s story without his paintings, so we needed to bring his paintings to life.”

Until next week!

~Jordan

All images and the featured image are from lovingvincent.com