6:00pm. Sep 09, 2011.
A special screening of the work-in-progress documentary by Roberto Guerra and Kathy Brew on two of the the world’s most influential designers, Lella and Massimo Vignelli.
The documentary Design is One: The Vignellis recollects the career and life of the Vignellis with interviews with the couple and features a series of testimonials by architects, designers, curators, educators and more. The film is a celebration of the passion, achievements, contributions and everlasting influences of the Vignellis in the world of design.
> Preview the film at designobserver.com
The filmmakers:
Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra
Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra work together on arts and social issue documentaries, with a particular focus on representing the vision and contributions of creative people to larger audiences. They are interested in the interface between art and reality, and in how artists respond to issues of our times. Recent projects include: four short films on Chinese contemporary artists, part of the Observer Observed series for The Joy of Giving Something, Inc.; ID/entity: Portraits in the 21st Century, commissioned by the MIT Media Lab; a collaboration with artist Mierle Ukeles, creating a multiple-channel installation about the Fresh Kills landfill; Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution. Guerra and Brew also independently produced segments for Public Television, WNET’s City Arts and Egg, and received two Emmy awards for Outstanding Fine Arts Programming. Besides their film on the Vignellis, they are working on several other projects.
Prior to working together, they each have an extensive background in filmmaking. Roberto Guerra’s previous films include portraits of artists and profiles of international personalities in the worlds of design and fashion. The films have always been characterized by a sense of involvement and intimacy with the subjects and by a depth of cultural sub-text. Some of the titles include: Frida Kahlo, Oskar Kokoschka, Hans Haacke, Seventy Five Years of Cinema (as seen through the eyes of Henri Langlois), Chanel, Chanel, The Story of Fashion (a three-hour series on twentieth century fashion), The Beauty Queens (a three-hour series profiling Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden and Estee Lauder), and Design, a six-part series profiling Karl Lagerfeld, Elliott Erwitt, Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Milton Glaser, Benjamin and Jane Thompson, and Richard Sapper, among many others.
Kathy Brew’s experience spans experimental work to independent documentaries and public television productions. She has worked for public television on both the west and east coasts in the U.S. – WNET/Channel Thirteen in NYC and KQED/Channel 9 in San Francisco. She served as Associate Producer for arts-related documentaries, including Four Dances for Television; Breaking the Mold (about sculptors in the Bay Area); Comedy Tonight; as well as Producer/Writer for Art Previews (short features). Ms. Brew has worked over the years with several other artists/producers on a range of media projects, including: Regret to Inform, a documentary about widows of the Vietnam War that won awards at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and the Independent Feature Project’s American Spirit Awards, as well as having been nominated for a 1999 Oscar in the documentary category; Rabbit in the Moon, a documentary about Japanese-American internment during World War II, another award-winning film at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, which aired on POV in 1999 and won a national Emmy; several commissioned projects for ZDF-Arte Television (in Germany) with artists Lynn Hershman and Gustav Hamos. Her own independent video work, Mixed Messages (1990), examines gender stereotyping in popular culture and received numerous awards at film and video festivals.
Register your interest:
The presentation is a preview screening of Design is One: The Vignellis. The full-length version is scheduled to be released in 2012. If you would like to acquire a copy for your personal use, or for educational purposes, please register your interest with This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
On the net:
Looking Back, Thinking Forward: A Narrative of the Vignellis
Vignelli Celebration: Jan Conradi, the author of Unimark International: The Design of Business and the Business of Design writes about Lella and Massimo Vignelli and the opening of the new Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT.
"Lella and Massimo Vignelli. It is intriguing to think that with a lifetime of effective design solutions, diverse clients, international recognition and professional visibility, the Vignellis are hitting their stride with perhaps their most important work of all. We could say that the Vignellis have now become their own client as they are documenting their wealth of experiences, connections, thoughts and pathways. They are branding it with a building as the Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT, setting it typographically in the Vignelli Canon, living it in Roberto Guerra’s documentary Design is One — The Vignellis. Massimo always talks about the search for meaning and the search for understanding, culminating in the search for the way to convey this to others; now we can see and experience how they do this for themselves.
Their work — publications and packaging, furniture and products, showrooms and architectural interiors, identity programs and transportation graphics, and more — has been well-documented. The tangible artifacts, interesting as they may be, offer only a snippet of a larger story. Instead, looking at the Vignellis' career trajectory illuminates meaningful realities in design practice. The Vignellis have been where many designers would like to be. A few times they’ve stumbled, more often they have been dramatically successful. There is much for students to learn and their focus now is on the students, on the learning, and on the future."
