My daughter and I headed into the city last night to catch the final night of the PDX Film Fest. They were showing Gary Hustwits’ much anticipated documentary, Helvetica. I thought I was going to have to head to either Seattle (showing at Typecon in August) or San Francisco to catch this film in the theaters, but thankfully it was submitted to Portland’s film fest this year and they decided to bring it here. 

It was standing room only last night at the Hollywood theater last night as we all crammed in to check out the typographic nerdery. All totaled the film was 80 minutes and featured some of the absolute greats (Paula Scher, David Carson, Stefan Sagmeister, Erik Spiekermann, etc.) in the areas of graphic and type design. What I loved about the film was the clean, modern look to the photography and the minimalist soundtrack; it helped to further the feel of Helvetica’s own modern stature. Actually, the film reminded me a bit of Hillman Curtis’ film work in the way it was shot and the soundtrack work.

After the film there was a question and answer section with Gary Hustwit and David Carson, which was great. Tons of film making questions were asked - giving insight into his production and filming methods, and he only faltered over one question (Why were there so few women in your film?), but he managed rebound, give a good response and move on without too much delay. The one comment he made that I found was interesting is that he has accrued over 60 hours of film on this project, and that a good portion of it was going to end up on the DVD. A definite solid purchase once it’s made available to the public.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am and is filed under Design, Print, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.