Sydney Cash Documentary Premieres at Woodstock Film Festival

Sydney Cash Makes Too Much Art, a new documentary exploring the 50-year career of sculptor Sydney Cash and its impact on his family, will hold its world premiere at the 2026 Woodstock Film Festival. The screening is scheduled for October 16 at 5 p.m. at the Woodstock Playhouse, followed by a Q&A session with the Cash family.

Sydney Cash Makes Too Much Art Premieres at Woodstock Film Festival

Ivan Cash directed the feature-length film, which investigates his father’s creative compulsion using interviews and archival footage from the 1970s documentary Gargoyles. Sydney Cash, now 80, is known for his work with glass, light, and mirrors, molding industrial materials like Flutex into dimensional sculptures that produce kinetic optical effects.

The elder artist’s sculptures appear in public and private collections globally, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Over his career, he has mounted more than 40 exhibits and received two Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants, the Fellissimo Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Ivan Cash Examines the Cost of Creative Devotion

Growing up in Marlboro, New York, Ivan Cash initially viewed his artistic household as ordinary before recognizing how distinctive his upbringing was. When he was in the fifth grade, he constructed a Thanksgiving turkey out of mirrors that landed him in the principal’s office because the materials were considered too dangerous for children.

I think that’s a fun metaphor because it implies that there’s something beautiful in being unique and doing something differently. But in that case there was also a real danger. The mirror could have cut someone.

Ivan Cash

While Ivan pursued interactive projects, short films displayed at the V&A Museum in London, and a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016, chronicling his father’s life required a five-year production window. The project altered his relationship with his father and gave him a deeper understanding of an archive he had previously avoided.

It’s a much more nuanced kind of a family portrait. It explores the staggering beauty and the sobering cost of devoting your life fully, unequivocally—to anything really—but in this case to art.

Ivan Cash

World Premiere Screening Details in Woodstock

The world premiere takes place at the Woodstock Playhouse on October 16 at 5 p.m. Following the screening, Ivan Cash, Sydney Cash, and members of the Cash family will participate in an on-site Q&A discussion.