Screenagers

Film commissioned by the Chicago-based publisher of Negro Digest, Ebony, Tan, and Jet to encourage advertisers to reach out to African American consumers. The Secret of Selling the Negro depicts the lives, activities, and consumer behavior of African American professionals, students, and housewives. A Business Screen reviewer noted that the film focused on the “bright positive” aspects of the “new Negro family.” The sponsor issued a companion booklet offering the “do’s and don’ts of selling to the Negro.”

A documentary about the legendary Japanese filmmaker.

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 type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Featuring interviews with Sir John Hegarty, Lord Tim Bell and Robert E. Jacoby, The Real Saatchis: Masters of Illusion chronicles the rise and fall of Britain's largest advertising agency,

Click for full movie details & trailers.

Click for full movie details & trailers.

Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock reignites his battle with the food industry — this time from behind the register — as he opens his own fast food restaurant.

The art of the "pitch" and its role in society, as told by many of the pitch industry's greatest salesmen, including Arnold Morris, Sandy Mason, Lester Morris, Wally Nash and Ed McMahon as well as a look at the Popeil family.

Every year, thousands of commercials are made that never reach our TV screens, deemed too shocking to see. In order to make it onto the screen, they must clear all manner of obstacles, from fussy clients to obsessive regulators and restrictive rights issues. X-Rated takes a look at these outlawed pieces of advertising, revealing the most explicit, controversial and shocking ads never seen. These are ads that break all manner of taboos, from sex, violence, blasphemy, homosexuality, animal cruelty, rapping pensioners, swearing children, suicidal toys and naked athletes to Kylie in her undies on a bucking bronco. Amongst the contributors are advertising executives, producers and censors. The programme also takes a look at the embarrassing world of western celebrities in Japanese ads.

The personal odysseys of some of the most influential advertising visionaries of all time and the stories behind their campaigns.

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

Click for full movie details & trailers.

From 1996 to 1998, a low-budget TV commercial for Saskatoon’s Great Buffet of China aired relentlessly. Featuring a Caucasian pitchman introducing the phrase “How Chee” and a group of amateur young actors repeating it, the ad became infamous. Some laughed. Others cringed. Many called it the worst commercial ever made. Thirty years later, it still resurfaces—at one point even going viral in China. How Chee! explores the unlikely origins of the ad, the friendship between an immigrant restaurant owner and the professor who tried to help save his business, and the now-adult actors who became locally famous long before going viral was a thing.

'One Man and His Shoes' tells the story of the phenomenon of Air Jordan sneakers showing their social, cultural and racial significance and how ground-breaking marketing strategies created a multi-billion-dollar business.

Programming the Nation? takes an encompassing look at the history of subliminal messaging in America. According to many authorities, since the late 1950s subliminal content has been tested and delivered through all forms of mass-media including Hollywood filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and William Friedkin. Even our modern military has been accused of these practices in the "war on terror" against soldiers and civilians both abroad and at home. With eye-opening footage, revealing interviews, humorous anecdotes, and an array of visual effects, the film categorically explores the alleged usage of subliminals in advertising, music, film, television, anti-theft devices, political propaganda, military psychological operations, and advanced weapons development. Director Jeff Warrick makes it his personal mission to determine if these manipulative tactics have succeeded in "programming the nation?" Or, if subliminal messaging belongs in the category of what many consider urban legend.

A series of visual paradoxes between the names of the streets of Madrid and those of the shops located in them.

A travelogue through the diverse neighborhoods of Madrid, its picturesque streets and its history; and an approach, with a sense of humor, to the lighted signs and advertising slogans of the shops: an unusual portrait of the city and its people.

A documentary on the marketing of pop culture to Teenagers.

Political spots are a genre with its own rules, continuities and ruptures. This film explores different visions of Argentina constructed by publicists and candidates faced with the task of seducing voters.

Once upon a time... consumer goods were built to last. Then, in the 1920’s, a group of businessmen realized that the longer their product lasted, the less money they made, thus Planned Obsolescence was born, and manufacturers have been engineering products to fail ever since. Combining investigative research and rare archive footage with analysis by those working on ways to save both the economy and the environment, this documentary charts the creation of ‘engineering to fail’, its rise to prominence and its recent fall from grace.