Christo’s Valley Curtain and Running Fence

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary—Short Subject, Valley Curtain celebrates Christo’s dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains. Since the late 1950s, the Bulgarian-born artist’s large-scale temporary works of art have helped change our perception of art and society.

Running Fence depicts the long struggle by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to build a 24-mile fence of white fabric over the hills of California disappearing into the Pacific. Cost: $3 million. The idea at first must seem the limit of absurdity, for the fence was taken down as planned at the end of two weeks and now exists solely on film.