Art & Copy

A porn-loving, Charles Manson-befriending, Mississippi Republican runs to become the next sheriff.

Nicknamed “Architect to the Stars,” African American architect Paul R. Williams had an incredible life. Orphaned at the age of four, Williams grew up to build mansions for movie stars and millionaires in Southern California. From the early 1920s until his retirement 50 years later, Williams was one of the most successful architects in the country. His clients included Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. His name is associated with icons like the Beverly Hills Hotel, the original MCA Headquarters Building and LAX Airport. But at the height of his career Paul Williams wasn’t always welcome in the restaurants and hotels he designed or the neighborhoods where he built homes, because of his race. “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story” tells the compelling, but little known story, of how he used talent and perseverance to beat the odds and create a body of work that can be found from coast to coast.

Arguing 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.

Film exploring the life of legendary designer Virgil Abloh. It tracks his spectacular ascent from Kanye West’s right-hand man to his role as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton.

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.

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

OSO is a journey through the history of a pop icon told by its own protagonists, the Tous family, Spain's most famous jewelers.

Hollywood 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.

World-renowned Drag Queen Miz Cracker helps a Texas family that’s experiencing strange occurrences after renovating their 1892 home. As a lover of the paranormal, can Miz Cracker solve their ghost problem and help them coexist peacefully with the spirits?

Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.

King Lines follows Chris Sharma on his search for the planet's greatest climbs. From South American fantasy boulders to the sweeping limestone walls of Europe, Sharma finds and climbs the hardest, most spectacular routes. Off the coast of Mallorca he discovers his most outrageous project yet, a 70 foot arch rising from the Mediterranean Sea...

From 1957 —the year in which the Soviets put the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit— to 1969 —when American astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon—, the beginnings of the space conquest were depicted in popular culture: cinema, television, comics and literature of the time contain numerous references to an imagined future.

Inside a computer a space-time is revealed in which image and sound become numbers and motion manifests as rhythm, flow and chaos. This tracking and integration experiment removes the superficial identity of video to detect kinetic disturbances in everyday environment.

Every year, thousands of commercials are made that never reach our TV screens, deemed too shocking to see. In order to make it onto the screen, they must clear all manner of obstacles, from fussy clients to obsessive regulators and restrictive rights issues. X-Rated takes a look at these outlawed pieces of advertising, revealing the most explicit, controversial and shocking ads never seen. These are ads that break all manner of taboos, from sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, animal cruelty, rapping pensioners, swearing children, suicidal toys and naked athletes to Kylie in her undies on a bucking bronco. Amongst the contributors are advertising executives, producers and censors. The programme also takes a look at the embarrassing world of western celebrities in Japanese ads.

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.

The year 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Paris Fashion Week. To mark the occasion, Loïc Prigent looks back on half a century of fashion design and evolution in Paris. The 1970s, with the arrival of a new generation such as Kenzo and Sonia Rykiel, changed the game by simplifying and democratizing collections. The 1980s saw the emergence of personalities with a great appetite for spectacle: Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler, and Karl Lagerfeld.

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.

Immersion in a world of contemporary design in search of more virtuous practices. In Helsinki, German designer Julia Lohmann uses seaweed to create dyed garments; in Amsterdam, Marjan van Aubel creates objects powered by organic photovoltaic cells; in London, the Superflux duo develops futuristic installations to alleviate potential food shortages.

Programming the Nation? takes an encompassing look at the history of subliminal messaging in America. According to many authorities, since the late 1950s subliminal content has been tested and delivered through all forms of mass-media including Hollywood filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and William Friedkin. Even our modern military has been accused of these practices in the "war on terror" against soldiers and civilians both abroad and at home. With eye-opening footage, revealing interviews, humorous anecdotes, and an array of visual effects, the film categorically explores the alleged usage of subliminals in advertising, music, film, television, anti-theft devices, political propaganda, military psychological operations, and advanced weapons development. Director Jeff Warrick makes it his personal mission to determine if these manipulative tactics have succeeded in "programming the nation?" Or, if subliminal messaging belongs in the category of what many consider urban legend.

A documentary on the marketing of pop culture to Teenagers.