Helvetica (2007)

Objectified

A feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Bad Boys

The Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s and early '90s seemed willing to do anything to win. That characteristic made them loved — and hated. It earned them the title: Bad Boys.

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

Attention: A Life in Extremes

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Death Metal Angola

Following nearly 40 years of unrelenting war, peace and reconstruction are slowly arriving to Angola. Huambo, Angola’s second largest city, finds 55 children in the Okutiuka orphanage under the care of Sonia Ferreira. Her boyfriend, Wilker Flores, is a death metal guitarist who uses sounds and rhythms of this hardcore music as a path to healing. Or, as Sonia says, “to clear out the debris from all these years of war.” The feature documentary follows Wilker and Sonia’s attempts to stage Angola’s first-ever national rock concert, bringing together members from different strands of the Angolan hardcore scene from different provinces, as it all unfolds in fits and starts, against the bombed out and mined backdrop of the formerly stately Huambo.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

At 14, best friends Robb Reiner and Lips made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, hailed as the "demi-gods of Canadian metal" influenced a musical generation that includes Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. Following a calamitous European tour, Lips and Robb, now in their fifties, set off to record their 13th album in one last attempt to fulfill their boyhood dreams.

The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.

Wolf Warrior

A Chinese special force soldier with extraordinary marksmanship is confronted by a group of deadly foreign mercenaries who are hired to assassinate him by a vicious drug lord.

Religulous

Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.

Man on Wire

On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York's World Trade Center twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit's "highest" achievement.

Fish Tank

Mia is a rebellious teenager on the verge of being kicked out of school. Her hard-partying mother, Joanne, neglects Mia's welfare in favor of her own, and her younger sister hangs out with a much older crowd. Sparks fly between Mia and Connor, Joanne's new boyfriend, and he encourages Mia to pursue her interest in dance. As the boundaries of the relationships become blurred, Mia and Joanne compete for Connor's affection.

Searching for Sugar Man

Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock 'n' roller, Rodriguez.

Alpha Dog

Johnny Truelove likes to see himself as tough. He's the son of an underworld figure and a drug dealer. Johnny also likes to get tough when things don't go his way. When Jake Mazursky fails to pay up for Johnny, things get worse for the Mazursky family, as Johnny and his 'gang' kidnap Jake's 15 year old brother and holds him hostage. Problem now is what to do with 'stolen boy?'

Maverick

Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional three thousand dollars in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game that begins in a few days, so he joins forces with a woman gambler with a marvellous southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.

A Taxi Driver

May, 1980. Man-seob is a taxi driver in Seoul who lives from hand to mouth, raising his young daughter alone. One day, he hears that there is a foreigner who will pay big money for a drive down to Gwangju city. Not knowing that he’s a German journalist with a hidden agenda, Man-seob takes the job.

Infinity Pool

While staying at an isolated island resort, James and Em are enjoying a perfect vacation of pristine beaches, exceptional staff, and soaking up the sun. But guided by the seductive and mysterious Gabi, they venture outside the resort grounds and find themselves in a culture filled with violence, hedonism, and untold horror. A tragic accident leaves them facing a zero tolerance policy for crime: either you'll be executed, or, if you’re rich enough to afford it, you can watch yourself die instead.

Under the Silver Lake

Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who's swimming in his building's pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.

Little Nicky

After the lord of darkness decides he will not cede his throne to any of his three sons, the two most powerful of them escape to Earth to create a kingdom for themselves. This action closes the portal filtering sinful souls to Hell and causes Satan to wither away. He must send his most weak but beloved son, Little Nicky, to Earth to return his brothers to Hell.

Bean

Childlike Englishman, Mr. Bean, is an incompetent watchman at the Royal National Gallery. After the museum's board of directors' attempt to have him fired is blocked by the chairman, who has taken a liking to Bean, they send him to Los Angeles to act as their ambassador for the unveiling of a historic painting to humiliate him. Fooled, Mr. Bean must now successfully unveil the painting or risk his and a hapless Los Angeles curator's termination.

My Life as a Zucchini

After his mother’s death, Zucchini is befriended by a kind police officer, Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home filled with other orphans his age. There, with the help of his newfound friends, Zucchini eventually learns to trust and love as he searches for a new family of his own.

Green Street Hooligans

After being wrongfully expelled from Harvard University, American Matt Buckner flees to his sister's home in England. Once there, he is befriended by her charming and dangerous brother-in-law, Pete Dunham, and introduced to the underworld of British football hooliganism. Matt learns to stand his ground through a friendship that develops against the backdrop of this secret and often violent world. 'Green Street Hooligans' is a story of loyalty, trust and the sometimes brutal consequences of living close to the edge.

Epic

A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world—and ours.

RRR

A fictional history of two legendary revolutionaries' journey away from home before they began fighting for their country in the 1920s.

Eyes Wide Shut

After Dr. Bill Harford's wife, Alice, admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met, Bill becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter. He discovers an underground sexual group and attends one of their meetings -- and quickly discovers that he is in over his head.

Apocalypto

Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

Stand by Me

After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four Oregon boys decide to go see the body. On the way, Gordie, Vern, Chris and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, as they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.

Oz the Great and Powerful

Oscar Diggs, a small-time circus illusionist and con-artist, is whisked from Kansas to the Land of Oz where the inhabitants assume he's the great wizard of prophecy, there to save Oz from the clutches of evil.

Slumdog Millionaire

A teenager reflects on his life after being accused of cheating on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".

12 Years a Slave

In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.

Captain America: The First Avenger

During World War II, Steve Rogers is a sickly man from Brooklyn who's transformed into super-soldier Captain America to aid in the war effort. Rogers must stop the Red Skull – Adolf Hitler's ruthless head of weaponry, and the leader of an organization that intends to use a mysterious device of untold powers for world domination.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker, with the help of his mentor Tony Stark, tries to balance his life as an ordinary high school student in Queens, New York City, with fighting crime as his superhero alter ego Spider-Man as a new threat, the Vulture, emerges.

Mad Max: Fury Road

An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order.

Inception

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Oppenheimer

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Fight Club

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.

Prometheus

A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.

Ex Machina

Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

Joker

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

Toni Segarra: The Ads Writer

Advertising surrounds us. It is part of our lives, our memory and our culture: it is a pure reflection of our society. However, those who think and create ads are unknown people. Playing with the mechanisms of publicity as a narrative resource, we enter this medium through Spain's best creative director: Toni Segarra.

Letras que marcan

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Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs

Southern California’s Coachella Valley, including the communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, boasts hundreds of extraordinary midcentury modern homes, public buildings and commercial structures. Modern designers such as William F. Cody, Albert Frey, William Krisel, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Donald Wexler, E. Stewart Williams left their collective mark on this desert paradise. Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs traces the history of modern architecture in Palm Springs from the first bold forays into modernist design to the preservation challenges facing the region today. Director Jake Gorst’s film features rare archival images and footage as well as interviews with historians, homeowners and the architects who helped create this mecca of modernism.

It's Dutch Design

It's Dutch Design is a 60-minute documentary about the worldwide success of Dutch Design. Top Designers and international keyplayers reveal their personal vision and explain why a small country could become so big in the field of Design. The history is told with iconic Dutch Design examples, spanning more than 100 years.

Worlds largest rocket builder

It’s October 10 2020 and Kim Jong-un presents the largest mobile rocket on Earth. Jippe Liefbroer, Interaction Design student, sees the rocket and thinks: it can be bigger. For his graduation project he built 'Kimmi's worst nightmare', a 31 meter long rocket. That is 1 meter longer than Kim Jung-un's.

Het Ding (untitled, 1957)

Next to the Bijenkorf on the Coolsingel stands one of Rotterdam’s most famous sculptures, an untitled structure created by Russian modernist artist Naum Gabo, that has been simply called Het Ding (The Thing). This documentary about the restoration of Naum Gabo’s nameless sculpture from 1957 combines awe-inspiring shots of this artwork with audio fragments from Gabo’s fiery Russian manifests.

Pitch People

Pitch People is a documentary film that focuses on the role the art of the "pitch" has played in society. It was produced in 1999 and includes interviews with 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.

The Atomic Cafe

A 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.

DJ Punk: The Photographer Daniel Josefsohn

Nobody captured the atmosphere of 1990s Berlin better than German photographer Daniel Josefsohn, who died in 2016 at the age of 54, leaving his mark in advertising with his irreverent aesthetic and punk sensibility. It was his spontaneous, imperfect images shot for an MTV campaign in 1994 that first made him famous.

Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse

In this highly anticipated sequel to his groundbreaking, ADVERTISING AND THE END OF THE WORLD, media scholar Sut Jhally explores the devastating personal and environmental fallout from advertising, commercial culture, and rampant American consumerism. Ranging from the emergence of the modern advertising industry in the early 20th century to the full-scale commercialization of the culture today, Jhally identifies one consistent message running throughout all of advertising: the idea that corporate brands and consumer goods are the keys to human happiness. He then shows how this powerful narrative, backed by billions of dollars a year and propagated by the best creative minds, has blinded us to the catastrophic costs of ever-accelerating rates of consumption.

Il fiume ha sempre ragione

Alberto Casiraghy and Josef Weiss are true bibliophile artists. One in Osnago, the other in Mendrisio, they have been dedicating themselves for years to valuable editorial and typographical activities, still printing with mobile characters, preserving the memory of a perfect ingenuity made of manual skills and technique, but also of inventiveness and poetry. Silvio Soldini gives us a realistic and poetical portrait of these two artists-artisans, who chose one of the oldest professions in a modern world, finding great success and approval.

Alternate Spaces

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area.

Art & Copy

The personal odysseys of some of the most influential advertising visionaries of all time and the stories behind their campaigns.

Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production

Up until just over 30 years ago, when the desktop computer debuted, the whole design production process would have been done primarily by hand, and with the aide of analog machines. The design and print industries used a variety of ways to get type and image onto film, plates, and finally to the printed page. Graphic Means is a journey through this transformative Mad Men-era of pre-digital design production to the advent of the desktop computer. It explores the methods, tools, and evolving social roles that gave rise to the graphic design industry as we know it today.

Arne Jacobsen’s Modern Denmark

Danish documentary about the disobedient schoolboy with a talent for painting, who became one of Denmark’s greatest architects. His ideas were ahead of their time and often received criticism, but today, 50 years after his death, Arne Jacobsen's schools, town halls and libraries are still with us, and they define modern Denmark.

Greetings From Planet Smurf

The Smurfs were created in 1958 by the Belgian comic author Peyo (Pierre Culliford, 1928-1992) and they are one of Belgium's most recognized exports. From Brussels to Los Angeles, via Dubai, a journey into the tiny world of the famous little blue people, from the story of the creation of the original comic to the account of their huge global commercial exploitation.

Pressing On: The Letterpress Film

Why has letterpress printing survived? Irreplaceable knowledge of the historic craft is in danger of being lost as its caretakers age. Fascinating personalities intermix with wood, metal, and type as young printers save a traditional process in Pressing On, a 4K feature-length documentary exploring the remarkable community keeping letterpress alive.

Fernand Pouillon, Une architecture habitée

In this documentary, Marie-Claire Rubinstein reveals to us, through the testimonies of the inhabitants who live there, the architectural achievements of the French urban planner Fernand Pouillon in Algiers. In particular the vast complexes of hundreds of social housing units, including the most famous Diar E Saâd (1953), Diar El Mahçoul (1954) and Climat de France (1957). The historical context, during the war of independence is related by the historian Benjamin Stora and Nadir Boumaza. This documentary also evokes the personality of Fernand Pouillon in a post-colonial context.

Mad Women

The story of pioneering women making iconic TV ads that changed the world: from Shake n' Vac and Levi's, to the Flake girl in the bath and the Lynx effect

The Light Bulb Conspiracy

Once upon a time... consumer goods were built to last. Then, in the 1920’s, a group of businessmen realized that the longer their product lasted, the less money they made, thus Planned Obsolescence was born, and manufacturers have been engineering products to fail ever since. Combining investigative research and rare archive footage with analysis by those working on ways to save both the economy and the environment, this documentary charts the creation of ‘engineering to fail’, its rise to prominence and its recent fall from grace.

Hanzi

Hanzi is a documentary exploring international design, visual culture, and identity through the lens of modern Chinese typography. The film covers a variety of topics such as how languages shape identity, and what role handwriting plays in the digital age.

Les Couturiers de l'Église

Plot unavailable

Urbanized

A documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.

The Gutenberg Enigma

A portrait of the inventor of the letterpress, who was a key figure in the history of mankind, but also an enthusiastic inventor, a daring businessman, a tenacious troublemaker: the life of Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1400-68).

El hombre que diseñó España

Graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist José María Cruz Novillo redesigned Spain's corporate image as the country transformed itself and tried to move into the future.

The Real Mad Men and Women of Madison Avenue

Chronicles the growth of the advertising industry from the 1950s through today, looking at the real men and women who created some of the most ground-breaking advertising campaigns and slogans and whose work changed the landscape of the ad industry. Roy Eaton, Jerry Della Femina, Paula Green, George Lois, and other creative giants recount the history of the advertising industry through unforgettable stories and campaigns.

Maija Isola, Master of Colour and Form

A 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.

The Unanswered Ives: American Pioneer of Music

The Unanswered Ives is the first film about Charles Ives (1874-1954), an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. The 60-minute documentary sheds light on Ives' life and work in all its facets and inconsistencies. American singer and composer Frank Zappa included Charles Ives in a list of influences that he presented in the liner notes of his debut album Freak Out! (1966). Ives continues to influence contemporary composers, arrangers and musicians. Planet Arts Records released Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra. Ives befriended and encouraged a young Elliott Carter. In addition, Phil Lesh, bassist of the Grateful Dead, has described Ives as one of his two musical heroes.

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

In 1968, art students Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell made a trippy photo collage for their musician friends Syd, David and Roger. The resulting album and album cover, A Saucerful of Secrets, helped launch two careers: that of Pink Floyd, one of the 70s megabands, and of Hipgnosis, which, over the course of the next 25 years, designed a stream of iconic album covers.