http://www.fastcodesign.com/3041441/22-movies-every-designer-should-watch-on-netflix
Looking for something fun and inspirational to do this weekend? Then find the remote and get comfortable because the following is a list (compliments of Fast Company) of movies every designer should watch on Netflix and links to watch them now. Here’s the first dozen with the remaining 10 suggestions in the link above:
1-2. OBJECTIFIED/URBANIZED: Call it two thirds of director Gary Hustwit‘s Design Trilogy. Objectified fetishizes the obsession behind industrial design. And Urbanized tours the world of urban planning. (Helvetica, arguably his most renowned film, is currently not available on Netflix Instant). Hustwit has a particular talent for digging into the granular thought processes of modern day designers without ever dumbing down their soundbites. [Watch here and here]
3. DESIGN IS ONE: LELLA & MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Vignelli Associates is considered one of the greatest cross-disciplinary design firms in history—best known for producing the iconic, once-polarizing Vignelli NYC Subway Map. Lella and Massimo Vignelli were the husband and wife team behind it. Design Is One profiles their creative relationship, which spanned decades, before Vignelli’s death in 2014. [Watch here]
4. GUCCI: THE DIRECTOR. We all know the Gucci brand, but this film takes us right inside Italy’s famed fashion label, following ex-creative director Frida Giannini for 18 months. The film will come to Netflix February 1, even though Giannini was just canned.
5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST: If you boiled down every western you’ve ever seen into one archetype of gunslinging—then you put that story into the hands of one of the greatest cinematographers in history (Tonino Delli Colli, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Life Is Beautiful)—you’d get Once Upon a Time In The West, a rare gem in Netflix’s ever-dwindling options for truly excellent streamable films. [Watch here]
6. LEVIATHON: Some documentaries feature a lot of talking heads. Others, a tightly scripted story. Leviathan has no desire for narration. It puts you inside the bowels of a commercial fishing boat, drowning the camera in a dramatic abyss where Moby Dick meets Fight Club, with blood, chains, and horrific storms. The decidedly non-linear structure and use of portable cameras attached to people, animals, and objects offer up visual perspectives that few other documentaries have been able to achieve.[Watch here]
7. INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE. What’s it like to make a hit video game with a staff of one or two people, taking meetings with Microsoft execs before going back to 12 hours of pixel painting? This very watchable documentary profiles two teams of designers while they created Super Meat Boy and Fez, a couple of the biggest critical and financial indie hits of the past decade, in a high-stakes race to make both deadlines and ends meet. [Watch here]
8. BILL CUNNINGHAM: NEW YORK. “It’s one snap, two snaps, or he ignores you, which is death.” That’s Vogue editor Anna Wintour describing the on-the-street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who has been contributing to the New York Times Style section for decades. This documentary explores his work, and life, with some irresistible soundbites from celebrities he has photographed. [Watch here]
9. CUTIE AND THE BOXER: Ushio Shinohara is a neo-Dada artist who paints by punching his pigments. Noriko is his wife. This documentary—which won Zachary Heinzerling the 2013 Sundance Film Festival award for best director— explores the quirks and sacrifices of their 40-year marriage. [Watch here]
10. DETROPIA: Not the easiest documentary to watch, Detropia is a portrait of Detroit’s decay, seen through the eyes of three of its residents and told without narration. [Watch here]
11. AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY. Ai Weiwei is China’s most prominent artist-activist, known for openly challenging the Chinese government (and even being imprisoned for it). The documentary takes you inside his studio, work, and philosophies. [Watch here]
12. THE GRANDMASTER: Kung fu is the most beautiful of the martial arts, and The Grandmaster, by acclaimed Hong Kong action auteur Wong Kar-wai, captures it with a poetically noir brutality—even if critics have panned the story itself. [Watch here]
