LOS ANGELES, CA.- Kino Lorber announced that Corinna Belz’s acclaimed documentary Gerhard Richter Painting, now in its sixth week at New York’s Film Forum, will open at local Laemmle Theatres (http://laemmle.com/) in Los Angeles on Friday, June 15.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will host a special sneak preview of the film on Thursday, May 31, as part of their Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, presented by The New York Times.

One of the world’s greatest living painters, Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. Infamously media-shy, he agreed to appear on camera for the first time in 15 years for a 2007 short by Belz called Gerhard Richter’s Window.

Her follow-up, Gerhard Richter Painting, is exactly that: a thrilling document of Richter's creative process, juxtaposed with intimate conversations (with his critics, his collaborators, and his American gallerist Marian Goodman) and rare archive material. From our fly-on-the-wall perspective, we watch the 79-year-old create a series of large-scale abstract canvasses, using fat brushes and a massive squeegee to apply (and then scrape off) layer after layer of brightly colored paint. This mesmerizing footage, of a highly charged process of creation and destruction, turns Belz’s portrait of an artist into a work of art itself.

“Magnificent and evocative…as close as cinema gets to tracking the impulses and paradoxes of a gifted imagination.” – Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

“Thrilling…akin to being in a museum that’s come alive.” – Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment

“A must-see for followers of contemporary painting…one of the most important living painters shows how he does it.” – John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter