Movies: Modernism

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 t...

This insightful documentary feature from PJ Letofsky serves as a profile of iconic Austrian-American Architect Richard Neutra, whose work and legacy have helped shape the modern understanding of design, architecture and the interconnected fabric of n...

In their finely appointed Connecticut home, Agnes and Tobias have grown used to the imperfection and fragility of their marriage. Quietly nursing their grief over the death of their son, they get by well enough together. Agnes' boozy sister wanders i...

Young, vivacious Billie uses her charms on influential businessman Glenn Abbott in hopes of getting her secret fiancé Gil a diplomatic appointment. Meanwhile, Gil's affections meander to beautiful ingenue Kentucky, Billie's best friend....

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area....

BBC documentary about Franz Kafka played by GREEK TV in 1990.This documentary is one of the ten films of "The Modern World: Ten Great Writers (1988)"....

Guyanese painter Aubrey Williams (1926-1990) returns to his homeland on a “journey to the source of his inspiration” in this vivid Arts Council documentary, filmed towards the end of his life. The title comes from the indigenous Arawak word ‘timehri’...

Iain Syme returns to his family’s farmland in the Scottish Borders and attempts to sell it off to a mysterious local landowner. However, his brother Cammy, a hermit who still lives on the land, has different ideas......

A symmetrically divided building: on one side, an important public hospital, on the other, a bewildering ruin. On the horizon, Rio de Janeiro, public health, education and Brazil’s aged modern project. Shot entirely in the monumental and only partial...

In this documentary, Marie-Claire Rubinstein reveals to us, through the testimonies of the inhabitants who live there, the architectural achievements of the French urban planner Fernand Pouillon in Algiers. In particular the vast complexes of hundred...

Rubén tries to describe the color blue as "The color of dreams, of art, of the ocean and of the firmament", thereby unleashing half a century of poetry....

From the series "The Modern World: Ten Great Writers", this playful documentary introduces James Joyce's most famous work "Ulysses". It includes fantastic adaptations to film from passages of the novel. It also includes excerpts from a book written b...

Ruxandra, a young woman just out of school, decides to become an actress, convinced that personal charm can keep instead of talent....

A history of the work of Merce Cunningham....

The Unanswered Ives is the first film about Charles Ives (1874-1954), an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. The 60-minute documentary sheds light on Ives' life and work in all its facets and inco...

Southern California’s Coachella Valley, including the communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, boasts hundreds of extraordinary midcentury modern homes, public buildings and commercial structures. Modern designers such as William...

Documentary about the Swedish modernist painter Otto G. Carlsund....

Danish documentary about the disobedient schoolboy with a talent for painting, who became one of Denmark’s greatest architects. His ideas were ahead of their time and often received criticism, but today, 50 years after his death, Arne Jacobsen's scho...

A portrait of Eric Lyons and Span, under the scrutiny of Ian Nairn, as well as the residents of their estates....

Next to the Bijenkorf on the Coolsingel stands one of Rotterdam’s most famous sculptures, an untitled structure created by Russian modernist artist Naum Gabo, that has been simply called Het Ding (The Thing). This documentary about the restoration of...