

Typography, Graphic Design and Global Visual Culture
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
The art of the "pitch" and its role in society, as told by many of the pitch industry's greatest salesmen, including Arnold Morris, Sandy Mason, Lester Morris, Wally Nash and Ed McMahon as well as a look at the Popeil family.
Explore NowThis tribute program takes you back into the world of Thierry Ardisson, a particularly creative, provocative, and erudite host and producer. From "Tout le monde en parle" to "Salut les Terriens !", via "Lunettes noires pour nuits blanches", the program retraces his more than 40-year career and his extraordinary journey, featuring cult interviews, testimonials, and archive footage. Numerous guests will pay tribute to him and share their memories and anecdotes on set. Thierry Ardisson, "the man in black," shook up the French audiovisual landscape and left his mark on his era. The program is broadcast on all TV5 Monde channels and on TV5 Québec/Canada.
Explore NowYou've seen him interview Mikhail Gorbachev, Angelina Jolie, Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro... You know him, but you don't really know him. Everyone has talked about Ardisson without ever getting close to the truth about him. My ambition: to reveal the man behind the costume of "The Man in Black." I thought to myself: if anyone can figure him out, it's me, a journalist and portraitist who has lived with him for 15 years. Who is the private Thierry behind the spectacular Ardisson? What we discover is how much Ardisson's personal history reflects the eras he has lived through, their contradictions, their utopias, their excesses, their violence. Like so many facets of a man and of society at the turn of the century.
Explore NowToypunks is a documentary film series covering the converging world of Japanese toys, fashion and punk rock. Exploring the birth of the designer vinyl explosion from its roots in character culture and punk music, Toypunks takes you in-depth with Japanese fashion icon, Hikaru Iwanaga, creator of the worlds first designer toy. Frank Kozik, Hiddy Kinoshita of Secret Base, Balzac, Three Tides Tattoo and more are interviewed highlighting profound cross-cultural connections between todays top creative talents in toys and fashion.
Explore NowHollywood movies are rapidly becoming vehicles for the ulterior marketing and advertising motives of studios and their owners, rather than entertainment in their own right. Behind the Screens explores this trend toward "hypercommercialism" through phenomena such as product placement, tie-ins, merchandising and cross-promotions. It combines multiple examples taken directly from the movies with incisive interviews provided by film scholars, cultural critics, political economists, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. Behind the Screens presents an accessible argument designed for school and college-age audiences-- precisely the demographic most prized by both Hollywood studios and advertisers alike. It features examples drawn from movies such as Wayne's World, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Summer of Sam, and Toy Story.
Explore NowA disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.
Explore NowA film about Maija Isola, the designer of Finland’s most beloved fabrics. Her bold designs, which include classics like Unikko, Kivet, Kaivo and Melooni, were essential in creating Marimekko’s lifestyle universe. The film shows the secrets to the success of Maija Isola’s fabrics, the values at the heart of Isola’s globetrotter lifestyle, and the legacy she left us. The film is narrated by Maija Isola, as well as her daughter Kristina Isola. It takes us close to Maija as a person, artist, thinker and visionary through her letters. We also hear Armi Ratia’s thoughts on Isola both as an employee and as a friend.
Explore NowArguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.
Explore NowDocumentary on the French graphic and visual artist and designer, editor, artistic director, and teacher who is known for his widely-used fonts.
Explore NowRubén tries to describe the color blue as "The color of dreams, of art, of the ocean and of the firmament", thereby unleashing half a century of poetry.
Explore NowSince the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Explore NowSet to a bebop jazz beat, this documentary brings to life the extraordinary work of graphic designer Saul Bass, whose groundbreaking title sequences for Hitchcock's films transformed the art of movie titles. Through interviews with directors such as Martin Scorsese and Guillermo del Toro, this film reveals why Bass is still considered the medium's greatest artist.
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