I’ve studied design — I have a degree and everything — I’ve dabbled with typography (and with lettering), and, beneath my veneer of post-modernism and cyborg feminism, I’m a modernist at heart. So, I’ve always had a soft spot for Helvetica, the quintessential modernist typeface. Still, while its history and ubiquity are undoubtedly interesting, I wouldn’t have thought any typeface, even Helvetica, could generate enough material to fill a feature-length documentary.
Posts Tagged ‘Documentary’
Žižek! (2005)
According to the cover of Žižek!, Slovenian philosopher and psychologist Slavoj Žižek is “the Elvis of cultural theory,” and the film itself certainly seems to agree. Director Astra Taylor follows Žižek around the world (well, to Slovenia, New York, and Buenos Aires), as he lectures, gives interviews, and jokes around about his cultural theories. This is interspersed with graphics and archive footage, and with scenes of Žižek doing everyday things — talking with his son, eating dinner, buying DVDs.
And since Žižek is a charming man and fun to listen to, it’s rather an enjoyable journey, and the film manages some insights in his works. The problem is that there just isn’t enough time to fully explore or explain his ideas, and the film has an annoying tendency of leaving things unexplained so that it can cut to another clip of Žižek making jokes.
Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies
(Ray Greene, 2001).
A documentary about US exploitation films from the 50s and 60s. Has the usual fringe-film-doc dilemma, in that it, quite naturally, focuses heavily on the exploiteers who were willing to be interviewed. This of course means that it can study its subjects – Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Harry Novak, &c – in quite some depth, but it also means that it ignores a lot of key figures and films. Which is only to be expected; no one documentary can encompass all exploitation cinema. The film also has a tendency to go on the defensive about the artistic significance of some films, which hurts its credibility.




