September 2009 Archives
September 18: Helvetica
September 18, 2009 at 7:00pm
Space 38|39 (38 W. 39th Street, 3rd Floor)
Trailer
"Gary Hustwit’s film builds an impressive sense of drama around the rise of the Swiss-designed typeface."
- Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out
"It sharpens your eye in general and makes connections between form and content, and between art and life. By rounding up a great group of eloquent obsessives eager to explain their feelings about a font, Hustwit has come up with 80 unexpectedly blissful minutes."
- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Even viewers who've never given a serif a second thought, though, are in for an exclamation point of joy from such a well-designed doc."
- Lisa Schwartzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"You’re guaranteed to spend the next few days scanning the world for Helvetica like a child on a cross-country car trip playing I Spy."
- Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated 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. Encompassing the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, Helvetica invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.
The film premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and was nominated for a 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the "Truer Than Fiction" category, and was shortlisted for the Design Museum London's "Designs of the Year" Award. An excerpt of the film was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
80 Minutes
About the Typeface
Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edüard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas's director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas's German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.
Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.
October 16: Requiem
October 16, 2009 at 7:00pm
Space 38|39 (38 W. 39th Street, 3rd Floor)
Trailer
"Quietly devastating and unbearably moving, this is a soul-searching classic."
- Nigel Floyd, Time Out New York
"Brisk, taut and confident...a rigorously urgent and compelling film."
- Kevin Thomas, LA Times
"A naturalistic and thrillingly powerful film...a character-driven, understated movie, concerned with the violence that dysfunctional families inflict on their children, and the battle between reason and faith...Not a devil in sight; but this might just be the most intelligent possession movie you'll ever see."
- David Mattin, BBC
"This quietly unnerving psychological study from German director Hans-Christian Schmid wields its ambiguity about religion and science like a double-edged blade."
- Jim Ridley, Village Voice
"A jittery, cleansing naturalism, all the better to root the uncanny in the surfaces of this world."
- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
It is the 1970s, and Michaela (Sandra Hüller) is about to break free from the small town in Southern Germany where she has grown up her whole life. Leaving behind the strictures of her Catholic home, she heads off for university. But Michaela is subject
to strange attacks and labeled an epileptic by puzzled doctors. Now, among new college friends, she increasingly finds herself paralyzed by terrifying visions of devils.Based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old German college student who was believed to have been possessed by multiple demons (the story was also the basis for the American film The Exorcism of Emily Rose), the film has been promoted as a more truthful depiction of the real-life events. Steering clear of special effects or dramatic music, it instead takes a documentary approach that focuses on Michaela’s struggle to lead a normal life on her own.
Stage actress Sandra Hüller gives a stunning emotional tour de force in her feature film debut, for which she received the Silver Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival for best actress. The film garnered the FIPRESCI Prize for director Hans-Christian Schmid.
89 Minutes
November 20: Ace in the Hole
November 20, 2009 at 7:00pm
Space 38|39 (38 W. 39th St, 3rd Floor)
Clip
"Dark, funny, ferocious, and vintage Wilder all the way...Few films of bygone decades have retained their relevance as stingingly as this 1951 satire"
- David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor
“Wilder's lost classic...[a] brilliant indictment of media circus brutality...a virtuoso feat.”
- Eric Kohn, The Reeler
"Wilder and Douglas call down fire from the very heavens and put it on film in a hellish carnival of poisoned humanity and angry, dashed dreams"
- Guy Maddin, director of My Winnipeg & The Saddest Music in the World
"Walks a fine and crooked line between sharp satire and pitch black film noir."
- A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"Questions the very nature of human interest stories and the twisted relationship between the American media and its public...More than 50 years after the film's release, Ace in the Hole feels more relevant than ever."
- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
After being fired from a number of big city newspapers, hotshot reporter Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is reduced to working for a paper in dead-end Albuquerque. On his way to cover a rattlesnake hunt, Tatum accidentally stumbles on a story that he believes can get him back in the big time, if he plays the yarn long enough and can keep it to himself.
Billy Wilder’s follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is one of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker, legendary for both its cutting social critique and its status as a hard-to-find cult classic. An uncompromising portrait of human nature at its worst, the film was so far ahead of its time in its depiction of a media circus and the public's appetite for tragedy that it was a commercial disaster when first released, but now stands as one of the great American films of the 1950s.
Ranked among Empire Magazines best movies of all time, the film was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards and winner of the International Award at the Venice Film Festival. Wilder’s underrated masterpiece is a must see.
111 Minutes
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