Spring & Arnaud, a documentary film about acclaimed artists Spring Hurlbut and Arnaud Maggs, directed by York visual arts Professor Katherine Knight and York film alumna Marcia Connolly (MFA ’10), will screen for four days at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.
Billed as a breathtakingly tender portrait and love story that delves into the lives of two acclaimed Canadian 
artists, the 65-minute film was a Top 10 Audience Favourite at Hot Docs in April.
A photo from the film Spring & Arnaud
It will run Nov. 1, 2, 3 and 5 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema at 506 Bloor St. W. in Toronto. The closest subway station is Bathurst.
Spring & Arnaud’s production team included several York film department graduates, including editor Jared Raab, supervisor Chris Wiseman, colourist Conor Fisher and motion designer Mathieu Martel, all from the class of 2007.
In the film, Maggs is turning 85 when he embarks on a series of self-portraits that wryly depict his life’s work. Hurlbut, at 60, is creating haunting works that evoke mortality while harbouring the certainty that Arnaud’s time is limited. Together and alone, each grapples with the nature of an artist’s creativity where the drive for invention and discovery resists life’s finite reality.
Spring & Arnaud immerses the viewer in a world where art and life are indivisible and where the couple’s devotion to each other is matched only by their dedication to their own work. The camera captures the visually rich and precise world of these strong individuals, the texture of their surroundings, the humour of their interaction and their struggles to bring their ideas to life.
Below is a trailer for the film
The urban feel of the studio and gallery is seen in counterpoint to the artists’ bucolic retreat in the south of France. It is a world shaped by the artists’ commitment to distill what is most meaningful from life to create an enduring trace of their existence.
Through her production company Site Media Inc., which produced the film, Knight creates documentary films about leading Canadian artists, including Annie Pootoogook and Colette Urban, as well as the celebrated Inuit art community of Cape Dorset, Nunavut, and a feature documentary on Wanda Koop, called KOOP: The Art of Wanda Koop.
To buy tickets, visit the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema website.