To mark the 80th birthday of British art icon David Hockney, director Bruno Wollheim—who made a 2009 documentary about the painter’s life—has pieced together unseen archival footage into a series of 80 films. From an intimate moment sketching by a stream to time at his London home musing on his thought process, the series, titled DH-80, gives unprecedented insight into the life of the elusive artist. Here, Wollheim talks about the project:

“When I accepted David’s offer to switch from making his biopic to filming him painting the East Yorkshire Wolds, I embarked on a testing, all but financially ruinous, but a magical journey into the unknown. The result was a 2009 BBC1 doc A Bigger Picture, and now an equally crazy venture to make 80 short clips from the 120 hours of mostly unseen footage I’d shot but couldn’t find a place for.

"Filming single-handedly, I used to joke it was like filming wildlife. To revisit this material, and those years, is to be back in the company of an entrancing, original, provocative and enquiring mind and eye. What do we see? It was a chance not just to pay homage and mark his 80th, but also to look at how film can play out in real time, versus television’s often over-constructed reality.”