News

When Gary Hustwit took his latest documentary “Eno” to Sundance in January 2024, he wasn’t riddled with anxiety about whether or not the doc about musician Brian Eno would find distribution.

The odds were undeniably against him: Scoring a big studio deal as an independent filmmaker is, these days, like winning the lottery. And Hustwit’s decision to forgo a conventional chronological doc about Eno’s career in favor of creating generative software that creates a different version of the movie every time you see it, made it a particularly hard sell.

But despite factors, Hustwit and “Eno” producer Jessica Edwards fielded offers from several distributors in Park City.

Still, the filmmaker wasn’t convinced they were ready to distribute it the way he intended. “I don’t think many of the distributors were ready to take on something like ‘Eno,'” he says. “I am also still innovating the...

7:16 Am Pt -- The U.S. Justice Department has accused Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack a classified Pentagon computer.  Pam Anderson is enraged with Britain, The United States and President Trump after the arrest of her close friend Julian Assange. Assange was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in the UK after the country withdrew his asylum. Anderson went on a tear on Twitter Thursday morning, saying, "How could you Ecuador?...

Most filmmakers dream of scoring a big studio deal, but not Gary Hustwit. The “Helvetica” director applies a “do it yourself” model to the release of his movies. “Rams,” his recent documentary about German industrial designer Dieter Rams, is Hustwit’s latest venture into self-distribution.

“I don’t want to be paying someone else’s overhead,” said Hustwit. “I can reach our core audience better than anyone else can, and I don’t have to share the profits. A lot of filmmakers have this illusion that if you sign with a distributor they’ll do all the work, and that’s just not the case.”

Instead, Hustwit serves as his own marketer and booker. He rents the theaters that play his films, and the filmmaker often shows up in person to do a Q&A following a showing.

In the case of “Rams,” Hustwit hosted some 40 events. Most of the engagements were sellouts.

Alex Trebek is sticking around on "Jeopardy!" for at least a few more years -- the host just agreed to a contract extension after making a lot of noise about retirement. Alex's new deal with Sony Pictures TV will keep him dropping clues through the 2021-22 TV season, and you gotta figure they backed up the Brinks truck for him. Remember, he flat out told Harvey Levin earlier this year on "OBJECTified" ... there was a...

In today’s TV roundup, Netflix will hang on to “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” and MTV reboots “Aeon Flux.”

Casting

Carolyn Hennesy has landed a guest role on “Suits.” Hennesy is set to play a character named Josie Gray, the CEO of a successful New York Fashion House, who becomes entangled in a legal battle with an up-and-coming independent designer. Hennesy is repped by Stone Manners Salners Agency and Justice and Ponder.

Dates

Fox News Channel will debut the second season of “OBJECTified,” hosted by TMZ’s Harvey Levin, on Sunday, June 24 at 8 p.m. Et. The season premiere will spotlight Earvin “Magic” Johnson as he shares his most prized possessions in his Beverly Hills home.

Discovery announced its new reality series, “Hard To Kill,” premieres July 31 at 10 p.m. The series stars Tim Kennedy, an active, Ranger-qualified, Green Beret, Special Forces Sniper who has served tours in Iraq,...

Updated with debut date: Fox News Channel says OBJECTified will return for Season 2 on Sunday, June 24. Premiere episode will feature NBA Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic Johnson.

Kris Jenner, Steven Tyler, Pitbull, Pamela Anderson, Willie Nelson, and Ufc President Dana WHite also will be featured in the 10-episode Season 2.

Fox News Channel previously announced the S2 pickup for the cable net’s Sunday 8 Pm Et timeslot.

Hosted by TMZ’s Levin, OBJECTified profiles celebrities and newsmakers, using objects they’ve hung on to over the years. Season 1 featured Tyler Perry, Martha Stewart, Mark Cuban, Hulk Hogan, and Benjamin Netanyahu. An average of just under 1.2 million total viewers watched the first season, including 226K in the 25-54 age bracket, winning its timeslot in both metrics among cable news net programs.

OBJECTified is produced by Harvey Levin Productions, Inc. in association with Telepictures and distributed by Fox News Channel. Levin and Ryan Regan are exec producers,...

Gary Hustwit, the director behind the design trilogy of "Helvetica," "Objectified" and "Urbanized," has figured out a way to take the over 100 hours of footage that weren't used in his films to the audience that he knows is super interested. He's in the last days of the Kickstarter campaign for his book project, "Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized:  The Complete Interviews." Indiewire spoke to Hustwit, who is currently in development on a new doc and a new narrative project, about the process of transforming his video interviews into print form, and here's what he said: So what provoked you to bring this unused interview content out of your archives? Anyone that's made a documentary can understand the shooting to edit ratio.  On certain projects, it's high as 100:1, or even more than that.  I have all of these conversations that I got to have with these designers over the past eight years.

From mosh-pits to moon-men, and food to fonts, the New View documentary season showcases the unusual, the unlikely and the utterly obsessed

It's time for another treat courtesy of the Guardian Screening Room: a five-film season of cutting-edge documentaries that should contain something for everyone. All life is here: secrets of the master chefs, the inside scoop on classic monster movies; what life is like for learning-disabled punk rockers; the intricacies of lettering and typeface design; and the story behind a Russian orthodox nunnery. It all kicks off a week today, but now's the time to enter our competition to give away free viewings to 1000 people.

So, on 15 April, we begin launching our film season: one film a day for five days.

First out of the traps is El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, a film about the legendary Spanish restaurant, which closed in 2011. During its heydey it pioneered "molecular gastronomy...

Ed Burns, whose debut film The Brothers McMullen premiered at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, was announced today as a jury member for next month’s Sundance in Park City, Utah. Burns joins documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, executive Tom Rothman and 16 others named to five juries that will award prizes at independent film’s most high-profile showcase.

Short Film Awards will be announced at a ceremony on Jan. 22, with feature film awards announced at a separate ceremony on Jan. 26. The festival runs this year from Jan. 17-27.

Click below for the entire Sundance jury list:

U.S. Documentary Jury

Liz Garbus is a prolific documentary filmmaker.

The beginning of each month is an exciting time wherein Netflix dumps a large number of new titles onto their streaming service. Comb through those titles as well as others added in the past couple of weeks, and a few great titles bubble to the surface. Let’s take a look at a documentary about urban design, a drama about adolescent sexual identity, an existential Western from the vaults, and a few more movies worth streaming this week. The New and Noteworthy Ubranized (2011) Following his documentaries on typefaces (Helvetica) and industrial design (Objectified), director Gary Hustwit completes his Design Trilogy with Urbanized, a look at urban planning and the design challenges of cities. Featuring interviews with many of the world’ s leading planners and architects, Urbanized pours through an incredible amount of information relating to urban design methodologies and how they have changed through the centuries. The film is neatly presented by dividing its time between different...

When the World's Fair, the World Cup or the Olympics come to town, neighborhoods are cleaned up and ostentatious architecture rises up as the world's eyes fall on the chosen city. Photographers Gary Hustwit and Jon Pack have just launched their new project, a photographic examination of what the Olympics leave behind when they leave a city. Just hours after launching the project on Kickstarter, the photogs have already raised $3,000 for what looks like an awesome book. Last year, Hustwit, who was doing crowdfunding before it was cool for his films "Helvetica" and "Objectified" launched his first Kickstarter campaign for his film "Urbanized," about urban design.  The campaign ended up raising over $100,000. Watch the pair's Kickstarter video below, where they show off some of the work they've shot and talk about the project:...

I dropped in on the Ifp Documentary Labs a couple of times, and one of the highlights for me was the “Web Tools for Documentary” workshop run by guest speaker Gary Hustwit, a filmmaker who used the web to great effect in the production and self-distribution of his “Design trilogy” of Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized. Hustwit, who worked in publishing and distribution before he moved behind the camera, really knows this stuff inside out – and considers his engagement with the web an integral part of what he does now. “I think of all this stuff as filmmaking – it’s all part of the process,” Hustwit says. “I want to pay the rent and make the next film, [so I do] whatever I’ve got to do to make that happen.”

Below are 10 bits of indispensable advice from Hustwit’s workshop:

1. Connect with the audience early

With his most recent film, Urbanized, Hustwit launched...

After teaming on the sponsored docu The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Morgan Spurlock’s Warrior Poets has teamed with Keith Calder’s Snoot Entertainment to go with a full-blown commercials production operation. New York, NY (May 7, 2012) – Morgan Spurlock’s New York based production company Warrior Poets has teamed with Keith Calder’s Los Angeles based Snoot Entertainment and 16 year commercial production veteran Shannon Lords to create Warpaint, a commercial production company that will serve as a home for innovative directors who are looking to expand their craft into more diverse and lucrative opportunities. The company will represent a diverse array of both established and emerging directors from a variety of production backgrounds. Warpaint will maintain offices in New York, Los Angeles and London. Warpaint completed its first project in January 2012 with acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky, who directed the upcoming campaign for Revlon featuring Emma Stone and Halle Berry. The company...

Going by the feverish buzz around city planning documentary Urbanized (the third of Gary Hustwit's recent series of films on modern design, after Helvetica and Objectified), you could be forgiven for expecting some kind of rapturous epiphany on how the world works. While the film is good - very good, in places - it's not quite as transcendent as some of the more enthusiastic pull quotes would have you believe. Much of this is simply down to the sheer scale of the subject the director decides to tackle; how cities work, why they work that way and what people are doing to change the status quo.There's simply too much material here, to be fair, too many possible angles for anyone bar a genius to adequately...

After bringing us illuminating takes on graphic design and industrial design wit Helvetica and Objectified, director Gary Hustwit turns his eye toward larger things with Urbanized. In a way, this is the first in the series to feel “important”. By looking at the very real ways urban planning and design affect the lives of people of all stripes, Urbanized takes on greater meaning.

Where Urbanized finds most success is in the presentation of workable solutions. Sure, there is some education on just what urban planning involves, but it’s much more a film about philosophies and practical problem solving. For example, there’s an interview with the mayor of Bogota, who explains how the city reduced a good deal of its traffic congestion by restricting parking spaces in the city. Less parking, less driving. It’s a simple solution that then allowed the city to implement a wide range of...

Ove the past few years, documentarian Gary Hustwit has been putting out entries in his so-called Design Trilogy. Beginning Friday, January 13th, to highlight the release of the third entry in the trilogy, the Tiff Bell Lightbox will be presenting all three films with Gary Hurstwit in person.

Helvetica

The first entry in the Design Trilogy was 2007′s Helvetica. You wouldn’t think a documentary about a ubiquitous font would be interesting, but Helvetica proved to be one of the best documentaries of recent years. While the topic was typography—and one font in particular—the documentary was really an exploration of the prevalence of design and how it shapes our perception of the world around us. I don’t say this about documentaries very often, but Helvetica actually changed the way I see the world around me. I look at things differently and I’m much more aware of...

Urbanized premiered in Toronto and now opens for a five-day run at the IFC Center in New York before rolling on to further cities in the coming weeks, but this past weekend saw it "playing to a packed house at the London School of Economics," and Justin McGuirk was there for the Guardian. "It is directed by Gary Hustwit, who made the cult hit Helvetica in 2007 (an unlikely film about a Swiss typeface) before taking on the much broader topic of industrial design in 2009's Objectified. With Urbanized, he zooms out even further to complete his trilogy, a cinematic story about design moving from the micro to the macro. With each leap in scale, Hustwit risks pointing his camera at a topic so big he ends up saying nothing at all. Yet Urbanized is a brave and timely movie that manages to strike almost exactly the right tone. For a...

For those unacquainted with documentarian Gary Hustwit, his small body of work may seem like bland pills that are hard to swallow. To date he has made a movie about a font ("Helvetica"), our relationship with manufactured objects ("Objectified"), and now urban design ("Urbanized"). These aren't the most enticing subjects--they all have a vague stench of "homework" or "PBS"--but no one is more aware of these pre-judgements better than the filmmaker, who has managed to confound expectations and instead compose films that are enjoyable and, at times, very fascinating. He continues in this mode with "Urbanized," the final entry in…...

It’s not that fonts aren’t interesting. They are. To some people. It’s that director/producer Gary Hustwit managed to make them downright fascinating in his documentary Helvetica. He continued that visual lust with Objectified – which explored manufactured things in a way that made assembly lines seem riveting. Even the assembly lines where literal riveting was taking place. Now, his love of objects grows bigger and more complex with Urbanized, a documentary about the design of whole cities and the flow of human beings though them. The trailer displays the same playful-yet-poignant tone of his other projects, and his resume speaks for itself. There’s no doubt that this will be another interesting entry into filmic exploration of the things that we live with (and in and around and on). Check it out for yourself: Would you go see it?...

Director Gary Hustwit is fast making a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker focused on the seemingly mundane. His first movie, 2007′s Helvetica, was entirely about the titular font. In 2009, he tackled industrial design in Objectified. Now he’s wrapping his design film trilogy with another documentary about something you see every day and never think twice about. This time it’s urban planning and design in Urbanized.

Urbanized premiered this year at Toronto, and we’ve got the trailer below.

Synopsis:

The final documentary in director Gary Hustwit’s design film trilogy (Helvetica and Objectified), Urbanized asks who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? How does the design of our cities affect our lives? Traveling to over 40 cities and exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, from massive infrastructure initiatives to temporary interventions, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.

Fans of director Gary Hustwit’s previous films Helvetica and Objectified will not be disappointed with the final instalment in his trilogy. A good number of us here at Sound On Sight had a chance to see the film at the Toronto International Film Festival where it premiered. Greg listed it as one of his three favourite films from the festival, saying, “This doc brings closure to Gary Hustwit’s design trilogy in breathtaking fashion. Moving from the methodic to the reductive, national to international, personal to impersonal- Hustwit provides a truly human face to the ever-demanding challenges of urban planning in today’s modern metropolises – a must-see”.

Meanwhile Dave Robson had this to say:

“I expect that fans of director Gary Hustwit’s previous films Helvetica and Objectified are already making plans to see his latest work. They won’t be disappointed. The audience at Friday’s screening certainly wasn’t.

Urban design is the language of the city. Thanks to a tip from The Playlist, the first official trailer for Gary Hustwit's new documentary Urbanized has been posted. This stylish and inspiring documentary from the director behind design docs Helvetica and Objectified examines ideas about cities and urban design with examples from around the world and interviews with architects, politicians, artists and city planners. This looks like another great film to follow-up Hustwit's past design documentaries. If anything, it'll be inspiring to see all the stunning cities from around the world they visit. I'm definitely planning to see this when I can. Watch the first official trailer for Gary Hustwit's Urbanized documentary, via YouTube: An independent documentary about the design of cities, looking at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders and thinkers. Urbanized is the third film...

Who would've thought a documentary about a font could be interesting? Leave it to director Gary Hustwit, who with his 2007 debut feature film "Helvetica" not only made a typeface seem thrilling, he also delivered one of the finest documentaries of that year. Following a similar path, he followed up that film with "Objectified," a look at industrial design that again took a premise that seemed bone dry but turned into something compelling. Well, design fans take note because Hustwit has one more for you. Capping off what will be a trilogy of documentaries on design, Hustwit has just come…...

Sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones we take for granted on a daily basis. One example of that is also the subject of Urbanized, the new documentary by Gary Hustwit: our cities. From the roads, to the trees, to the buildings and sidewalks, almost every square foot of every city in the world is carefully planned, yet we drive around not thinking about the intricate detail that was considered years and years ago to try and control congestion, pollution and a million other things. Hustwit's previous documentaries, Helvetica and Objectified [1], were also about seemingly mundane subjects but, once he was done with them, you couldn't look at typography or everyday objects the same way again. Urbanized will certainly do the same for your place of residence. Read a plot description and see the new trailer after the jump. Thanks to I Watch Stuff [2]for the heads up.

Well the Toronto International Film Festival has provided another incredible lineup again this year. Among the best of the fest is Steve McQueen’s Shame (so far the best of the year), Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Sadly I had to cut my trip short by three days, so I will be missing some key films, including Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse and Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo 2. We still have plenty of reviews to come in the next few days so make sure to check back for more coverage.

Luckily for me I dodged all the movies that received unanimous negative feedback. Perhaps the six films that have been panned the most by critics and audiences alike are, Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, Guy Maddin’s Keyhole, Madonna’s W.E., Joel Schumacher...

Urbanized

Directed by Gary Hustwit

2011, USA/United Kingdom, 82 minutes

I expect that fans of director Gary Hustwit’s previous films Helvetica and Objectified are already making plans to see his latest work. They won’t be disappointed. The audience at Friday’s screening certainly wasn’t. Observing the sea of people armed with library books, copies of The New Yorker, and NPR on iPods, Hustwit remarked that the output of Toronto’s creative community had been brought to a halt. To everyone else, then: the object of this review is to convince you that Urbanized is a witty, informed, and essential examination of one of the world’s most vital issues.

This documentary is a heady (but not at all overwhelming) mix. Urban design experts—architects, developers, city planners, academics, urban activists, and more—discuss their part of the field over slick cinematography featuring the some of world’s most iconic cities.

With Urbanized, filmmaker Gary Hustwit brings his celebrated documentary trilogy to a close. Beginning in the world of typography by exploring a single font in Helvetica, the series gained weight by moving to the world of objects in Objectified and now telescopes miles overhead to examine contemporary urban design. We spoke to Hustwit about what’s changed and what’s stayed the same as he has produced — and distributed — these stylish and intellectually engaging films.

Filmmaker: Your previous two design oriented docs have wound up dealing with subjects other than the the explicit ones of their titles. For example, Helvetica deals in part with corporate messaging, and Objectified about commodity culture and the future role of the object. What areas of discussion does Urbanized lead the viewer into?

Hustwit: I’m always fascinated by how design affects our daily lives, and how a lot of people are oblivious to it.

There are a couple of reasons for revisiting the Toronto International Film Festival's lineup for its documentary program, Real to Reel. One of them is Aj Schnack's interview with Thom Powers, Tiff's Documentary and Mavericks Programmer, posted just hours after the Mavericks lineup was announced on Tuesday. Discussing the highlights of both programs, they touch on another reason: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is making all sorts of headlines. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's third film chronicling the odyssey of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr, aka the West Memphis Three, through the labyrinth of the Us legal system, follows Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000). All three films deal with what Powers calls in his Programmer's Note "an 18-year-old murder case that has become an iconic example of a legal witch hunt." In 1993, when all three men were still teens,...

The Toronto International Film Festival has released the complete line-up of their impressive documentary slate which include new works from directors such as Morgan Spurlock, Werner Herzog and Alex Gibney. Herzog explores a triple homicide case in Texas in Into the Abyss; Morgan Spurlock follows fans to San Diego’s Comic-Con in Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope; Jessica Yu delivers a wake-up call about the world’s water supply in Last Call at the Oasis; and Nick Broomfield visits Wasilla, Alaska in his search for the ‘real’ Sarah Palin in Sarah Palin – You Betcha! Here is the complete line-up. Enjoy

Masters

Pina Wim Wenders, Germany/France

Canadian Premiere

German master filmmaker Wim Wenders shoots in 3D to capture the brilliantly inventive dance world of Pina Bausch and her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. Excerpts from many of her most famous pieces are shot outside in the streets and parks of...

A week after the announcement of the first, and largest, wave of films added to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival slate, the festival is now finally rounding out its list, with some of the most interesting additions yet.

Criterion Collection fans will again see a few of their more beloved filmmakers involved here, as Wim Wenders will be bowing his latest film, Pina, during the festival, as will Werner Herzog (not truly a Criterion Collection approved filmmaker, but we’ll count it). Herzog will be bringing his new documentary, Into The Abyss, which looks at those behind at triple homicide, including one man who is on death row and will be put to death just days after speaking with the filmmaker.

Other additions include Ron Fricke’s Baraka follow up, Samsara, Nick Broomfield’s surely controversial documentary Sarah Palin – You Betcha!, and documentaries from Alex Gibney and Morgan Spurlock.

Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Bell, Shannyn Sossamon, Dominic Monaghan and Cory Hardrict in The Day

Photo: Content Media The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival announced 56 more movies added to its festival line-up this year with selections in the Vanguard, Midnight Madness, Documentaries, City to City and Tiff Kids programs. And to be honest, the line-up is filled with titles, most of which are absolutely new to me.

I have seen one of the films under the Vanguard banner, a selection of young and cutting edge features and I've heard of Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31, Ben Wheatley's Kill List (watch the trailer to the right) was a hit at South by Southwest earlier this year and the documentary selections include familiar names such as Werner Herzog, Morgan Spurlock, Jonathan Demme, Alex Gibney and Wim Wenders, the latter of which is delivering a 3D documentary centered on the dance world of Pina Bausch and her company.

We had an smidgen of an idea that the Real to Reel section might be especially strong this year, but with the likes of Frederick Wiseman, Rithy Panh, Jonathan Demme, Werner Herzog, Jessica Yu, Alex Gibney, Joe Berlinger, Ron Fricke, Nick Broomfield and Michael Glawogger, we're now beginning to think that Thom Powers' section has not only outclassed Toronto's sister event Hot Docs, but just about any other doc-related film festival. Among the noteworthy World Premieres announced, we look forward to Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified) Urbanized, Andrey Paounov's The Boy Who Was King, Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss and the mind-numbing miscarriage of justice that has produced a trilogy of films from Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory). Chronos and Baraka helmer Ron Fricke brings us what will be a visual feast in Samsara, and certainly good for a couple of laughs we have Jessica Yu's...

When we launched our 100 Most Creative People in Business list last year, we surprised that only about 20 of those individuals were on Twitter: from actor/director Tyler Perry to DJ Gregg Gillis. In the year since, another 10 have joined for a 50% increase, including TV mogul Tyra Banks, Google Maps manager Stephen Chau, fashion designer Stella McCartney, and others. You can find the entire group of Most Creative People on our twitter list. But out of those tweeting who are the 10 you need to follow?

1. Dawn Danby, @altissima: The sustainable design strategist tweets about her work, but mostly offers haiku-like messages: he cuts corporate logos into american quarters with a jeweler's saw. painstaking souvenirs in black velvet display. very almost. a near miss

2. Padmasree Warrior, @Padmasree: Cisco's Cto obviously tweets about the company, but also the larger tech world: Cii Calls for an investment of Us $1 Trillion by 2020 in urban India http://j.

Sure, An Inconvenient Truth turned people's attention towards those melting ice caps, but it was such a downer! The Living Climate Change Video Competition hopes to launch a positive, design-centered conversation about climate change through the power of user-created videos.

The competition is sponsored by Ideo and hosted by Design 21, and the judges include all sorts of design, sustainability and culture luminaries like Allan Chochinov, editor in chief of Core77.com, Gary Hustwit, director of Objectified and Helvetica, Boing Boing co-founder Xeni Jardin, and Bill Moggridge, the new director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The competition will award $3,000 to two winners (one under 18, one over 18), who will also head to Ideo to participate in one of their famous Deep Dive sessions--that's right, you'll have a chance to cozy right up to David Kelley.

Submitted pieces must be no more than two minutes and depict how climate change will impact...

It's no secret that Film Junk has a few documentary fans on staff and every year we try and highlight some of the stand out non-fiction films. Although The Cove and Anvil! The Story of Anvil made some appearances on our year end lists -- along with a few others on our end of decade list -- we didn't really get a chance to write up any doc specific lists, so I figured I'd share some of the love The Documentary Blog has been spreading over the past week. Below you'll find my top 10 docs of 2009 followed by my top 50 documentaries of the decade. Also, I put together a collection of some acclaimed non-fiction filmmakers (including Joe Berlinger, Sarah Price and Jeff Feuerzeig among others) who have shared their picks for best of the decade as well! You can check that list out here [1]. Until then, have a look below...

2Nd Update: We have our winners. Thanks, all! Update: To win a digital copy of Objectified, answer the question below and email editor.filmmakermagazine At gmail.com. Almost three years ago I decided to check out what seemed to be an obscure little documentary about graphic design at SXSW and was surprised to find the line to get in stretching all the way down the length of the convention hall. As the editor of a magazine, the subject matter of Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica — an examination of the historical, communicative and ideological meanings of that ubiquitous typeface — interested me. I hadn’t realized that SXSW, which is full of filmmakers, musicians and web designers who all have Adobe InDesign loaded on their laptops, contained a...

In his monologue that closes out the industrial design film Objectified, reviewed here back in March, it's clear that columnist and author Rob Walker is perplexed by our obsession with material culture. He even goes so far as to propose a campaign that would entice people into appreciating the mountains of stuff they already possess: "Things you already own, why not enjoy them today?"

Turns out Walker was pondering these issues long before Gary Hustwit's camera was focused on him--writing the book Buying In, he started toying with ways to make objects worth more. "While doing the book I was thinking a lot about what makes a thing matter, and I sort of end the book on the idea that it has more to do with personal narrative than anything else--the meaning comes from us, not the object," he says. "So that led to 'Well, what if you made up a narrative,...

A wave of design documentaries are unlikely crowd pleasers.

You won't see any chase scenes or canoodling. No scatological jokes, and hardly any women. For the most part it's just wrinkly old white men talking about fenestration and foundation walls. Design documentaries may not be sexy, but they're enjoying a surprising surge on the indie film circuit.

Why design? The documentaries riding a wave of interest in the field, and designers are, almost without exception, charismatic figures who know how to court the camera.

The trend began six years ago with My Architect, an effort by Nathaniel Kahn to uncover the hidden life of his father, the enigmatic Louis Kahn. Nathaniel was born out of wedlock, and he barely knew his father, whom many consider the greatest architect of the 20th century. Kahn, who died badly in debt in a Penn Station men's room in 1974, maintained three families for years in almost total secrecy.

I first met Jennifer Bove in Austin, Texas, at the annual interactive hootenanny SXSW. We had just watched the premiere of the industrial design film Objectified at the Paramount Theater and, after being introduced by a mutual friend who thought we might like each other, made our way together over to the film's afterparty at the Driskill Hotel.

As we mixed it up with the film's stars--Dan Formosa, Tim Brown, and the film's director Gary Hustwit--it was one of those magical convergences: big names and old friends from all corners of the design community sipping Shiner Bocks. But especially after seeing a film about the design industry, all anyone could talk about were hot button issues: Detroit, sustainability, and inevitably, the economy. And as we made our way to the bar and ordered a pair of spicy-sweet Mexican martinis, I realized I hadn't asked Jenn what she was...

When we named Paola Antonelli as a 2007 Master of Design, she hinted at her upcoming exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, which included both actual and virtual objects by designers that "explore design's response to the dramatic changes in scale that people must navigate every day, from the view of an entire city on Google Earth to a street map on our mobile phone, from intimate, one-on-one conversations to the vast reach of social networks." This month, Seed Magazine delivers a fantastic article by the senior curator of architecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art--"A New Map for Design"--that takes that line of thinking a step further. Antonelli questions Milan's furniture fair as ground zero for design's future as the manufacturers once charged with cranking out hundreds of chairs in a factory no longer have the geographic pull on the industry:

Milan still represents a big...

Every year in Toronto, the Hot Docs Film Festival [1] manages to assemble an exciting assortment of top-notch documentary films from around the world. This year was certainly no different, and a number of the movies have already picked up distribution deals and are well on their way to gaining mainstream attention. However, there are always plenty of diamonds in the rough as well, amazing films that sadly may never find the audience they deserve. So which upcoming documentaries are hits and which are near-misses? Read on for our full report from the 2009 Hot Docs Festival! Best Worst Movie When he was 11 years old, Michael Paul Stephenson was cast in a low budget horror movie called Troll 2. He, along with many of the other actors, thought that it would be their ticket to big time acting careers, but were shocked to find out afterward that the final product was a complete disaster.

Objectified Directed by: Gary Hustwit Have you ever wondered why the handle of your potato peeler is shaped the way it is? Well after watching Gary Hustwit's documentary Objectified you won't be able to stop thinking about it. You'll also start looking at all the everyday things that surround us in our lives, questioning whether or not they are useful, and asking how we got so attached to them in the first place. This follow-up to the well-received documentary Helvetica is actually the second in what Hustwit now says will be a trilogy of design-related films. Considering the multitude of issues and questions that he managed to squeeze into this one, however, I am not quite sure that he has anything left to explore. When I saw Helvetica a couple years ago, I was blown away. I thought that the idea of making a documentary about a font might have been kind of gimmicky,...

Industrial design is the art that hides itself. In the end, function always trumps form no matter how beautiful the play between the two. Would, say, an Eames chair still be talked about if it didn’t work as a place to rest? Even the most striking pieces of design have a way of disappearing into the fabric of the everyday. Look how quickly the iPod has gone from being an almost-alien piece of hardware to another thing to pick up on the way to the gym. With Objectified, director Gary Hustwit (Helvetica) wants to get viewers thinking about industrial ...

We're all for getting out in the summertime, but there might not be anything more refreshing than cooling off in a movie theater... or seeing a movie in the comfort of your air-conditioned home on demand, on DVD, or online... or better yet catching a classic on the big screen at a nearby repertory theater. With literally hundreds of films to choose from this summer, we humbly present this guide to the season's most exciting offerings.

May 1

"Eldorado"

The Cast: Bouli Lanners, Fabrice Adde, Philippe Nahon, Didier Toupy, Franise Chichy

Director: Bouli Lanners

Fest Cred: Cannes, Warsaw, Glasgow, Palm Springs,

The Gist: When Elie (Adde), a hapless young thief attempts to rob Yvan (Lanners), a 40-year-old car dealer, the two form a unlikely friendship that leads to a road trip across Belgium in this slight comedy that won the Best European Film at the Director's Fortnight at Cannes last year.

It may not be a popular thing to say, but all the feel-good talk about carbon emission policies may be obscuring a bigger and more important problem: Our society's long-entrenched habit of rampant over- consumption. When we focus on carbon-emissions, are we postponing a change in consumer behavior that could be more beneficial over a long time?

Without weighing in on the global warming debate about the actual amount of man-made climate change, it is clear today that:

The global-warming pattern has slowed. Don't kill me yet… See for yourself and argue with the sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm The public is getting more skeptical and possibly tired of the message. Whether it's because of the bad economy, too many bogus green-washing marketing campaigns, or vociferous counter-claims from the political right, the Gallup Poll found that support for the...

At a recent London screening of the new documentary about industrial design, Objectified, Apple's lead designer Jonathan Ive joined Marc Newson to introduce the film. The event wasn't exactly a love-note to contemporary design--the film itself is deeply ambivalent about consumption, and Ive and Newson took the chance to unload about design's present condition.

As Design Week reports:

...Ive expressed nostalgia for the days before rapid prototyping.'When we started out we made all our own models. Just pressing "print" is an obstacle to designers being close to the materials and the object. There is a lot of lousy design,' he said. Ive also attributed the 'awful arbitrariness of form' to technological advances on electronic products. 'Form being divorced from a product's function is a huge and incredible challenge for design,' said Apple's senior vice-president of industrial design. He declined to comment on the state of the U.

"Your movie made me physically sick," one audience member told Gary Hustwit (left), the director of Objectified, the eagerly anticipated film about industrial design, last night at a screening in New York.

Far from being miffed, Hustwit grinned. "Maybe that's what we were trying to do," he said slyly.

The film, which chronicles the back story of the people and processes that create the vast array of designed objects that surround us every day, was screened before an audience largely made up of the very folks who toil in front of Cad programs and rapid prototyping machines to churn out those products.

But there's an essential tension at the heart of this story. On the one hand, Hustwit, who created the hugely popular film, Helvetica, celebrates the masters who have created some of the most successful products of our time--Jonathan Ive of Apple; Bill Moggridge, the "father of interactive...

The 2009 Hot Docs lineup has officially been announced and I'm extremely excited. For one, this will be a good opportunity to catch up on many of the films I missed at Sundance. Also, I'm currently not working, so I will have all of free time to dedicate to the festival. Nice. Luckily, there's a shit ton of movies that I'm interested in, so it won't be hard to fill out my schedule (It never really is). I've posted some crucial picks below, but you can also check out the full schedule for yourself over at the Hot Docs website [1]. What are you looking forward to this year? Objectified [2] Directed by Gary Hustwit [3] From telephones to toothpicks, nearly everything that fills our world is designed. Objects look and work the way they do because someone made them that way. Director Gary Hustwit examines industrial design's sweeping cultural impact with the same...

The Paramount Theatre hosted several notable screenings on the last day of the 2009 SXSW film festival, including the HD Premiere of Al Reinert's 1989 documentary For All Mankind. Audience members reported being thrilled that Gene Krantz, former Nasa Flight Director, was on hand to answer questions after the screening of the film, which tells the story of the Apollo space missions.

Wavy Gravy was seen leading an anti-war march down Congress Avenue, reported Neil Miller of Film School Rejects, in advance of the final screening of Michelle Esrick's doc Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie. Director Jonathan Demme was in town for the World Premiere of his music doc, Neil Young Trunk Show. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were expected to be in attendance for the local debut of Sundance hit 500 Days of Summer.

Volunteers Kill It! We noted well-deserved praise for SXSW Producer Janet Pierson yesterday, and that applies to...

The website for Objectified asks an interesting question, "How many manufactured objects did you touch this morning, between waking up and leaving your house?" The answer is a lot more than you'd expect. Nearly everything you touch and encounter in life that is man made was specifically designed at some point, whether it's your fork, your pepper grinder, or the table you eat on. The computer you're using to read this article was most likely obsessively sketched, spec'd, and confabbed about over conference tables before the design was finalized. But most people don't even consider what went into creating it because the design is transparent to them.

Objectified wants to fix that by calling attention to the work that goes into crafting the things we use every day; from toothbrushes, to laptops, to chairs, to potato peelers. It's directed by Gary Hustwit, the same guy behind the typography documentary Helvetica,...