Product Details

• Actors: na
• Directors: Justine Nagan
• Format: Anamorphic, NTSC, Widescreen
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Kartemquin Films
• DVD Release Date: July 16, 2010
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B003SHVY5M
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,384 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Parallel stories on the effects of the economy and technology on a small Wisconsin town and the printing industry, July 4, 2011

By 

Steven I. Ramm "Steve Ramm "Anything Phon... (Phila, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Typeface (DVD)

This interesting documentary covers two parallel stories at once - and adds a third one that will be of interest to graphic designers.

The small (population 13,000) town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin - which prides itself on being the Home of the Ice Cream Sundae, the economy has taken it's toll. It's largest employer - the Hamilton Wood Type Company - closed up shop years ago. Over it's history the company under priced its competitors and bought them up. Then it went out of business. Al, that remains is the huge factory. And the townsfolk turned it into a Museum, with a sole "Director". But Two Rivers is not on any major route so no one knows about it. On a good week, maybe 20 visitors come by, not much to use to pay the Director. The Town Council creates three more small museums but it's the ice cream sundaes that bring in the only real money ($500+ in a week!).

Director Justine Nagan follows the two parallel stories of the underused museum and the town losing its residents. But there is a third story and that is the history of the sign printing industry and how young graphic designers, trained on modern PCs are going back to the "roots" of the industry. A professor of Art Design at Purdue University in Indiana makes the 3-hour-plus journey to Two Rivers to teach students in how to use the amazing amount of graphically-interesting wooden type pieces in modern design. We meet a co-op of young artists who are spending time manually setting the typeface to recreate old posters. And there is a discussion of whether the painstaking work required to manually set the wooden type is superior than what I computer program can do.

The film is just over an hour and I found it interesting to watch. The bonus features consist of about 11 deleted scenes, which expand on the film.

This is both the story of a town surviving an economic downturn and a history of the lost art of manually "setting type". As a bonus there is the sound track that consists of about eight songs composed and performed by singer Josh Ritter.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Artistic and wonderful, November 29, 2010

By 

CassieW - See all my reviews

This review is from: Typeface (DVD)

Justine Nagan takes us deep inside the the lost craftsmanship of the print-age in this beautifully edited film. By focusing on one quaint museum in rural America, this film gives us more than a history of wood type, it delights us with a comprehensive sense of the soul and passion poured into this craft.

Typeface prompts the viewer to take a break from our chaotic world, to observe, to savor, and to simply appreciate. Full of textures, flaws and wrinkles, the ambiance of this film will invite you to reach out and touch, and even to lean close and sniff. Even a person not interested in the history of wood type will appreciate the characters and feelings in this wonderful film.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tensions in the hipster aesthetic, October 3, 2011

By 

S. Smith-Peter (Staten Island, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Typeface (DVD)

This documentary is, on the surface, about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, but really it's about tensions in the hipster aesthetic. Wood type is an excellent subject because it is the epitome of the authentic - it is relatively difficult to use, has a natural grain, and is a dying art form. Many graphic designers are drawn to it, but also need to make a living. That's where the opposite of wood type comes in - polymer. Polymer is absolutely inauthentic as a medium, being quite literally plastic, but it can be made in any size and can help letterpress artists make a living.

The documentary explores the tension between authenticity and convenience, between the need to be true to one's self and one's hipster identity and the need to make a living.

One of the interesting subthemes of the movie is the contrast between the way the original workers at the Hamilton factory interact with the type and the way the hipsters do. For the workers, wood type was a way of making a living, not primarily a means of expression. For the hipsters, this is reversed.

This is a fascinating documentary and one I'd recommend to a wide audience.