Objectified
Jul 10 - Aug 16, 2009
(Gary Hustwit, USA/UK, 2009, 75 min)
From potato peelers to iPhones, every manufactured item we use every day has a person behind it. This new documentary from Gary Hustwit (director of last year’s Helvetica) brings us behind the scenes of our material world and introduces us to masters who’ve created some of the most successful products of our time. Interviews with industrial design gurus Jonathan Ive of Apple, Dieter Rams of Braun, David Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO, Karim Rashid of Dirt Devil and others demonstrate that every object has a story to tell. But just as its title has a double meaning, Objectified finds tensions between its celebration of great products and the economic and environmental realities caused by commerce gone wild. Designers increasingly have to consider people—how we live, how we interact with mass-produced objects, and how we connect to the environment. The film is an excellent examination of the objects in our lives, the innovators of the field, and the future concerns we face.
"The Stranger Suggests: [a] sharp, brainy documentary obsessed with design...Gary Hustwit takes a kaleidoscopic view of industrial design, from interviews with design superstars to biographies of objects that set the world on fire (the iPod! The Dirt Devil! The Braun toothbrush!) to inquiries into the meaning, purpose, and dangers of our object-drenched planet." -The Stranger
"as sleek and handsome as any of the new and improved household items it exhibits." -NY Times (via the Seattle Times)
"A slickly entertaining and thorough enough curiosity about the form, function, context, inspiration, and evolution of industrial design." -Village Voice
Watch the trailer:
