Mark Landis perpetrated a massive ruse by donating his forged versions of pedigreed paintings to museums across the American South for decades. He became the obsession of one museum employee determined to take him down, who declared, “He messed with the wrong registrar.” (Surely, this is a sentence never before assembled.) Landis is a con man, an art forger described as “impressive” and “prolific” by the advertisements for the terrifically unpredictable, refreshingly human new documentary film Art and Craft. But from the first scene, it’s obvious he is not a swashbuckling criminal or even a man out to prove anything. He’s feebly slouching his way across the parking lot toward a Hobby Lobby, where he gets his supplies. It is not long before he starts to tell the directors about the most important person in his life: “Mother.” Stories about art forgers are usually about humans’ worst tendencies: disdain, envy, boasting. Art and Craft is the story of a person who just wants people to be nice to him the way he says they “seldom” are, because he’s odd and mentally ill. He’s not impersonating artists. He’s impersonating a philanthropist. He wants to be treated as a gentleman, like the ones he watches on Turner Classic Movies, the channel playing in the background as he paints. Even the registrar who nearly lost his mind chasing Landis cannot be cruel to him when they meet face to face. “I just like to copy things because it’s reassuring,” Landis explains at one point. He started doing it as a child, back when Mother and Daddy were still here, back when somebody loved him more than they loved anybody else. by Jen Graves