Design Disruptors

Peng. Von Augenblick und Ewigkeit

2025

Peter Engelhardt - aptly named “PENG” - has dedicated his entire life to good design: as a renowned designer as well as a collector of everything that makes up everyday life in the 50s, 60s and 70s ... The well-known and the nameless, the precious and the superfluous, the special and the everyday. The Engelhardt collection once comprised over 30,000 objects. But the more Peter collected, the more space he needed - and the less money he had. The last stop for the time being: a dilapidated industrial wasteland near Bingen, rainwater and theft the biggest enemies. The preservation of the collection - or rather the fight against its destruction - in the old mine in Waldalgesheim became the 78-year-old's life's work.

Saul Bass: Title Champ

2008

Set to a bebop jazz beat, this documentary brings to life the extraordinary work of graphic designer Saul Bass, whose groundbreaking title sequences for Hitchcock's films transformed the art of movie titles. Through interviews with directors such as Martin Scorsese and Guillermo del Toro, this film reveals why Bass is still considered the medium's greatest artist.

Identity: A Czech Graphic Design Love Story

2024

The documentary maps more than a hundred years of Czech visual culture, offers stories of well-known and lesser-known brands and shows that top graphic art is still being created in the Czech Republic today. The film is guided by Nicho Lowry, an American native with Czech roots, an avid collector and graphic design lover who embarks on an adventurous journey in the footsteps of the best of Czech visual culture. During his journey, he meets a number of contemporary graphic designers, as well as the legacy of icons who have passed away, many of whom have succeeded abroad. The film will lead Nich to his own roots through the uncovering of Czech identity and will introduce Czech graphic design to those who do not know the Czech Republic.

Shapeless Tracking

Inside a computer a space-time is revealed in which image and sound become numbers and motion manifests as rhythm, flow and chaos. This tracking and integration experiment removes the superficial identity of video to detect kinetic disturbances in everyday environment.

Gray Matters

2016

Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.

Objectified

2009

A feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

TGV, 30 ans de vitesse

2011

Helvetica

2007

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.