film + video

“[As a kid], I wanted to be an architect. I don’t even know where I got that idea from. I think I was told ‘you should be an architect’ somewhere early on, and I just latched onto it. My idea of being an architect was envisioning variations of what my room could be, split-level secret chambers, transportation in and out, that sort of stuff. I guess that’s why I enjoy getting to build these fantasy locations.

My house in New York is pretty spare; it’s sort of organized, but it is very simple. I do have some old telephones, but they are touch-tone. Everything else I use is all Apple. In a movie, if someone is going to listen to music, nine times out of ten I have them put on a record, which I myself never do. It looks so much nicer to me, to see this thing spinning and put a needle on it. It is what I grew up with, but it is also just a more beautiful object and it does something, you know – it spins. At the same time that is a little bit like fetishising this stuff. I met this guy in Italy who wanted to take me to this place where he has his collection of reel-to-reel tape recorders, because he thought I was obsessed with them. Well, I’m not obsessed. I don’t own a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but it does look nice when it spins and you film it.”

-Filmmaker Wes Anderson, in an interview with Tim Noakes for Dazed & Confused. Anderson’s latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, is in theaters Friday. Click below to watch the trailer.
Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

A U.K. poster for the 1983 film Wild Style!, directed by Charlie Ahearn.

London-based interaction designer and movie buff Eddie Shannon set out to digitize his massive collection of film posters so he could admire them without the risk of damaging the more fragile specimens. Two years and 12,000 digital photographs later, he has launched Film on Paper, an online movie poster archive that spans film genres, design styles, and countries. “All of the posters were bought because of my liking for the design or artwork and none were added to the collection as an investment,” notes Shannon, who began his collection in 1994 and now limits his acquisitions to posters from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. He’s particularly fond of those that feature original illustrated artwork by the likes of Drew Struzan, John Alvin, and Bob Peak. Meticulous documentation and a handy search box make it easy to find their work and to discover a few new favorites of your own.

Call a somnambulance. The multimedia goodness of the Sleepwalkers box.

Doug Aitken is up to his old tricks: enveloping museums in high-definition video projections that illuminate their facades and mesmerize passersby, which in the case of his latest project may include President Obama. The Los Angeles-based artist has transformed the National Mall’s Gordon Bunshaft-designed concrete donut (also known as the Hirshhorn) into a 360-degree convex-screen cinema aglow nightly through May 13 with his “SONG 1.” Meanwhile, the Seattle Art Museum recently commissioned Aitken to wrap a corner—the northwest, bien sûr—of its downtown HQ in a jumbo LED display that will debut early next year. The months between these Washingtonian works provide ample time to savor the Sleepwalkers box, an ultra-covetable multimedia remix of the public artwork that took New York by nocturnal storm in 2007.

Part deluxe commemorative edition, part DIY-spirited artist’s book, the Sleepwalkers box is a bold collaboration between Aitken, the Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records. The perforated cardboard cover reveals and conceals a fold-out poster of scenes from the five urban narratives (starring the likes of Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, and Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power) that were projected onto the exterior of the Museum of Modern Art. Set that aside to discover a turntable-ready vinyl “picture disc,” which the strong-willed will manage to avoid framing as an art object. A book of “fragments, markings, and images” from the making of Sleepwalkers includes breathtaking full-bleed images as well as an interview in which Aitken discusses the installation with Jacques Herzog. “Your work needs an ideal architectural conservation to unfold its quality,” advises the architect.
Read more

“Before microphones and television were invented, a leader had to stand in front of a crowd and bellow,” notes Rick Stengel, managing editor of TIME. “Now [one] can tweet a phrase that reaches millions in a flash. Influence was never ­easier—or more ephemeral.” Which makes the task of selecting TIME‘s list of the 100 most influential people in the world all the trickier. This year’s list, announced today and on newsstands tomorrow in the magazine’s April 30 issue, includes those who have wielded influence through fashion design (Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen), exquisite gadgets (Apple CEO Tim Cook), political cartoons (Ali Ferzat), Nordic cuisine (René Redzepi of Noma), and spandex underthings (Spanx founder Sara Blakely).

Then there’s the influencer who is lauded for his way with time itself: Christian Marclay, creator of the 24-hour cinematic odyssey known as “The Clock.” Geoff Dyer was up to the task of composing a concise yet evocative summary of the video piece, which he describes as stemming from an idea “audacious in its simplicity and herculean in execution.” As for the writer’s own experience of the work—well, it’s something of a chrono-cautionary tale. “During the film’s opening run in London, I had intended to stay long enough to get the gag—10 minutes?—before hurrying on to a lunch date,” writes Dyer. “It was so hypnotic, so thrilling, that I ended up watching 20 hours over a month, arranging life and appointments (for which I was invariably late) in such a way as to catch previously unseen segments of that celluloid epic called a day.”

“The first [poster for his cinema StudioFilmClub project in Port of Spain, Trinidad] I did was for Black Orpheus, actually, a few films in. I had started a painting, a study that I had kind of abandoned, of a black man in a boat. It was from this Duane Allman record cover, An Anthology—this image from the gatefold sleeve, with eight figures in a boat. One of them was the drummer, Jaimoe [Johanson], the only black guy in the band, and I started this painting of him, just Jaimoe, floating in a boat. I abandoned it. But then I was thinking about posting a poster for the film on the notice board here—this was when the space was the Caribbean Contemporary Arts Center; lots of artists were working here. It felt important to do something in the building, to have a weekly thing. And the film was Black Orpheus; I already had this figure in the boat seeing himself in the water. It was like Cocteau’s use of reflection to suggest entry into the underworld. So I just painted on it TONITE, BLACK ORPHEUS, STUDIO FILM CLUB and put it up. That was the first poster.

I love [hand-painted signage]. But I think it’s dying, all over the world; the technology has become so cheap. Five years ago it was cheaper to pay a guy to spend ten hours in the hot sun, painting a Stag bottle on a wall as advertising: now you can just print one up. It’s tragic—but I think it’s happened all over: in India, Africa. You see these large plastic signs going up where you once saw hand-painted ones. But when I came back to Trinidad, one of the things I was so attracted to here were these signs on the street. Often the wording was quite abstract to the outsider—NO DRAWER, BLACK AND WHITE, SOCA EXPRESS. These signs just punctuated by words. And words you can see from a distance, words in color. And with this language, too—I loved it.”

-Peter Doig, interviewed by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro in the March-April issue of The Believer

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Mmm. Donuts.” Splurge on L.A.’s finest (we’re partial to the sprinklebombs from Blinkie’s Donut Emporium) this weekend as ForYourArt opens its new activity space at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. with “Around the Clock: 24 Hour Donut City,” a tasty celebration that runs simultaneously with LACMA‘s 24-hour screening of “The Clock” by Christian Marclay. ForYourArt promises “a curated selection” of (free!) donuts beginning at noon on Saturday. Look sharp for the chocolate custard puff, as the selection will change every two hours. We hear that more enduring donuts will also be on offer, in the form of 1,000 pins made from Kenny Scharf’s donut paintings. The artist’s zippy donutmobile will be parked outside ForYourArt all weekend.

Meanwhile, here in New York, we suggest hitting up the Maison du Macaron en route to Saturday’s SVA/BBC Design Film Festival, a slate of groundbreaking BBC films that have never been screened in the United States. Curated by the all-seeing Steven Heller along with D-Crit faculty member Adam Harrison Levy, the festival includes films on topics such as the history of the Barcelona chair, the future of the book, and the real life stories that inspired Mad Men (yes, George Lois will be there). The $15 run-of-the-festival tickets are going fast, so grab one here.

Once you’ve recovered from the weekend’s dessert-themed cinematic adventures, head over to Steelcase’s New York HQ, which on Wednesday, March 28, plays host to the State of Design, an annual fundraising event organized by our friends at Metropolis and the Education Legacy Fund. The evening of “open, constructive dialogue about what shapes twenty-first century design and how designers respond to our evolving culture” will feature a conversation with health policy guru Ruth Finkelstein (New York Academy of Medicine) and Quest to Learn founder Katie Salen (DePaul University) moderated by Metropolis editor-in-chief Susan Szenasy. Learn more and register here.
Read more

“Painting under observation is worse than being in the hospital,” Gerhard Richter tells filmmaker Corinna Belz, shortly after she has installed herself and a small crew in his bright, clutter-free studio outside Cologne, Germany. Fortunately, the artist agreed to endure several months of scrutiny as he went about what he describes to Belz as “a secretive business”: painting a series of giant abstracts in the spring and summer of 2009. The result is Gerhard Richter Painting, a mesmerizing documentary that made its U.S. debut last December at Art Basel Miami Beach and is now playing at Film Forum in New York. “My interest was to show Richter at work,” says Belz, who first convinced the artist to appear on camera in her 2007 short, Gerhard Richter’s Window (fingers crossed for a trilogy). “How he moves, how he applies paint to canvas, his compelling squeegee technique.”

Between shots of Richter wrestling with fresh buckets of finely strained oils and silently pondering his progress, archival footage, and the perspectives of a couple of studio visitors (Marian Goodman, Benjamin Buchloch), Belz gently coaxes him to discuss his process and even his parents. And listen closely. “The soundtrack includes such things as the succulent sputter and pop of paint being moved in large quantities across surfaces with spatulas,” said Robert Storr, who organized MoMA’s 2002 Richter retrospective, before last week’s debut screening. “In other words, it’s a very realistic, very materialistic experience of what paint actually is, and it gives you an appreciation for the work, because moving that amount of what [Philip] Guston called ‘colored dirt’ around is not a romantic activity. It’s very much of a craft, and Richter very much approaches it as a craft.”
Read more

A year after leaving the world-was-his-oyster east coast for the harsh-light-of-constant-sunshine that is Los Angeles, LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch finally had a hit on his hands last year with the opening of “Art in the Streets,” an exhibition, as the name implies, all about street art. There was controversy, crowds, constant press, and even arrests. Chase that with a possibly-exploitative benefit hosted by Marina Abramovic, and it was official: Deitch had arrived. For those of you who weren’t able to make it out to LA for the spectacle that was this show, director Alex Stapleton has put together this great documentary about the exhibition, Outside In: The Story of Art in the Streets. So here’s what you’ll be looking at for the next 30 minutes:

Years ago, in those golden days of our youth, our favorite section of the now five-year defunct magazine Premiere was called “The Gaffe Squad.” A small box tucked away on some single page, it picked apart movies for those little mistakes here and there, be they continuity or a distracted grip accidentally being spotted hiding behind a curtain. The section was successful, we think, because not only did it give you the smug satisfaction of knowing that these big shot movie people were in fact fallible, but it also gave you a little peek behind the canvas in a way a PR firm never could. Fortunately, now that our lives are so steeped in the design world, we can still occasionally revisit those feelings when it comes to what’s become a standard on the internet: the dissection of type design in period films. Enter the great Christian Annyas, who invited type designer Mark Simonson to carefully analyze and critique the typography and lettering of the recent Oscar winner, and movie your friends won’t shut up about when you tell them you haven’t seen it yet, The Artist. In general, Simonson gives the film relatively average marks, noting that some of the type they’d selected looks passable for the era, whereas others, such as using typesetting instead of the hand-written or painted style that would have been the method of the day. There’s of course also the usual “that type didn’t come out until 60 years after the movie is supposed to take place!” talk, but we love it as always. In the end, with both this latest type-on-film analysis and back in the good ol’ days of Premiere, it isn’t so much even the careful dissection, as it is knowing that someone took all that time, and their years of knowledge, to lend us a little inside look at something that, for many of us, we might have otherwise had just wash right over us.

Letterpress lives on in this documentary short by U.K. filmmaker Danny Cooke, who offers a glimpse inside the movable-type printing workshop at Plymouth University. “This is a 500-year-old process, and it moves like a 500-year-old process,” says Paul Collier, a typography and letterpress technician at the school. “If you set up a paragraph or sentence, if you get wrong or if you haven’t planned your way forward…then you just have to take it apart and start all over again.” At the same time, he describes letterpress as calm, therapeutic, and “a very enjoyable process.” Sure, there’s a whiff of masochism that comes with watching a film about letterpress on a computer loaded with hundreds of font options—akin to reading about the glory days of ocean liners while on a transcontinental flight—but that’s all part of the fun, so get off “the lithography bandwagon” (as Collier calls it) and join the ink-rolling revival.