"Marina Abramovic - The Artist Is Present," a Documentary on Her Life - NYTimes.com "The Artist Is Present," the centerpiece of an identically named 2010 retrospective of work by the performance artist Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was one of those rare events that breach the wall dividing the art world from popular culture. Over 90 days - from the beginning of March through the end of May - hundreds of thousands of people streamed through MoMA, lining up (sometimes after camping out on 53rd Street the night before) for the opportunity to see Ms. Abramovic face to face. She sat in a plain wooden chair, gazing straight ahead, silently, into the eyes of whichever museum patron happened to be seated across from her. The effect, as recorded by Matthew Akers in his documentary "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present," was galvanic. Many spectators cried during their encounter with Ms. Abramovic, and tears could often be seen in her eyes as well. The film, which begins a two-week run at Film Forum on Wednesday in advance of its premiere on HBO next month, traces the genesis of that work and also provides, through interviews and archival clips, an overview of Ms. Abramovic's career. Like many other recent documentaries about artists, it is more celebratory than analytical, a kind of slick, extended promotional video for its subject. Which is fine as far as it goes, though an artist as provocative and charismatic as Ms. Abramovic might have been better served by at least a bit of contention. A hint of skepticism flutters in via television news reports hyperventilating about the presence of naked people at the museum - performers recreating some of Ms. Abramovic's earlier pieces - but the filmmakers are disinclined to seek out critical voices or to dig too deeply into the thorny issues of sex, violence and identity raised by her work. Instead, granted access to her at home, in the studio and even in the bathtub, they bask in her formidable aura and invite viewers to do the same. Tall and striking, with long, black hair and features that suggest an archaic Greek sculpture, Ms. Abramovic is an eloquent and passionate explicator of her art and the experiences that informed it. The child of anti-Fascist partisans who were national heroes in Tito's Yugoslavia, she joined the European avant-garde of the 1960s and "70s and gained a measure of fame for the fearless, sometimes violent way she used her own body in her performances. In addition to the words of the artist herself, "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present" collects testimony from art historians, dealers and curators, notably Klaus Biesenbach, the enthusiastic impresario of the MoMA show, who likens working with Ms. Abramovic to a love affair. And an actual love story is embedded within the film's summary of her life. In the 1970s and "80s she and the German performance artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, were lovers and artistic collaborators, a partnership that is narrated by both of them. Captured in occasionally haunting images, it suggests a great unwritten novel of creative passion and romantic disillusionment. The wry, gray-bearded Ulay is the most vivid supporting player in "The Artist Is Present," and his reunion with Ms. Abramovic is touching and sweet. But the emotional power and, finally, the aesthetic interest of the film reside in its attention to the work that provides its title and its reason for being. The daily spectacle of Ms. Abramovic in her chair at MoMA is brought back in all its strangeness and excitement, and you also catch a glimpse of the logistical challenges involved in staging something at once so simple and so radical. The patience and professionalism of the museum's security guards are one of the film's unstated themes. Mr. Akers has performed a valuable service for both the artist and the public in presenting a persuasive answer to the question that still plagues art that creates events and experiences rather than paintings and sculptures: Is it really art at all? Ms. Abramovic offers eloquent testimony, but a stronger case is made by the rapt and tearful faces of the museumgoers who sat facing her in Manhattan two years ago. The film's message can be summed up in a familiar phrase: You had to be there. Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present Directed by Matthew Akers; director of photography, Mr. Akers; edited by E. Donna Shepherd; music by Nathan Halpern; produced by Jeff Dupre and Maro Chermayeff; released by HBO Documentary Films and Music Box Films. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.