91福利社

First broadcast in 2015, this film provides a unique portrait of one of the most significant artists of his generation. For the first time, David Hockney allowed access to his personal archive of photographs and film, resulting in an unparalleled visual diary of a long life.

'I'm interested in ways of looking and trying to think of it in simple ways. If you can communicate that, of course people will respond - after all, everybody does look.' We witness Hockney's long-term one-man campaign against the pessimism of the world, mastering new media - whether acrylic paint or iPad digits - in the search for a picture adequate to his sense of what it means to be alive.

The film chronicles Hockney's vast career, from his early life in working-class Bradford, where his love for pictures was developed through his admiration for cinema, to his relocation to Hollywood, where his life-long struggle to escape labels ('queer', 'working class', figurative artist') was fully realised. Hockney offers theories about art, the universe and everything. But as he reveals, it's the hidden self-interrogation that gives his famously optimistic pictures their unexpected edge and attack. The subject matter is a way into the picture to see something else, to open our eyes and our minds.

Acclaimed film-maker Randall Wright offers a unique view of this unconventional artist, who, in 2015, was reaching new peaks of popularity worldwide and remained as charismatic as ever.