Link tags: documentary

A History Of The World According To Getty Images

A short documentary that you can dowload or watch online:

The film explores how image banks including Getty gain control over, and then restrict access to, archive images – even when these images are legally in the public domain. It also forms a small act of resistance against this practice: the film includes six legally licensed clips, and is downloadable as an HD ProRes file. In this way, it aims to liberate these few short clips from corporate control, and make them freely available for viewing and artistic use.

Licensed under aCreative Commons 0: “No rights reserved” license.

This Is What I Want To Do – Trailer 3 - YouTube

I can’t wait to see this documentary about Marc and Beyond Tellerrand!

Top Secret Rosies

I need to seek out this documentary, Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of World War II.

It would pair nicely with another film, The Eniac Programmers Project

Adam Curtis’s Seaside Dream (Phil Gyford’s website)

chef’s kiss!

(you know my opinion of Adam Curtis’s documentaries)

Coded Bias Official Trailer on Vimeo

Coded Bias follows MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that many facial recognition technologies fail more often on darker-skinned faces, and delves into an investigation of widespread bias in artificial intelligence.

BBC Radio 4 - Under the Cloud

James made a radio programme about “the cloud”:

It’s the central metaphor of the internet - ethereal and benign, a fluffy icon on screens and smartphones, the digital cloud has become so naturalised in our everyday life we look right through it. But clouds can also obscure and conceal – what is it hiding? Author and technologist James Bridle navigates the history and politics of the cloud, explores the power of its metaphor and guides us back down to earth.

Sophie Zhang and The Social Dilemma | Revue

I watched The Social Dilemma last night and to say it’s uneven would be like saying the Himalayas are a little bumpy.

I’m shocked at how appealing so many people find the idea that social networks are uniquely responsible for all of society’s ills.

This cartoon super villain view of the world strikes me as a kind of mirror image of the right-wing conspiracy theories which hold that a cabal of elites are manipulating every world event in secret. It is more than a little ironic that a film that warns incessantly about platforms using misinformation to stoke fear and outrage seems to exist only to stoke fear and outrage — while promoting a distorted view of how those platforms work along the way.

We Are As Gods

A forthcoming documentary about Stewart Brand (with music by Brian Eno).

Sight and Sound: The Cinema of Walter Murch on Vimeo

I enjoyed this documentary on legendary sound designer and editor Walter Murch. Kinda makes me want to rewatch The Conversation and The Godfather.

The Bit Player

Ooh! A documentary on Claude Shannon—exciting!

I just finished reading A Mind At Play, the (very good) biography of Claude Shannon, so this film feels very timely.

Mixing contemporary interviews, archival film, animation and dialogue drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon himself, The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.

Home Page — Doug Block

There’s a new reissue of the twenty year old documentary on Justin Hall’s links.net and the early days of the web.

Tellart | Design Nonfiction

An online documentary series featuring interviews with smart people about the changing role of design.

As technology becomes more complex and opaque, how will we as designers understand its potential, do hands-on work, translate it into forms people can understand and use, and lead meaningful conversations with manufacturers and policymakers about its downstream implications? We are entering a new technology landscape shaped by artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and synthetic biology.

So far there’s Kevin Slavin, Molly Wright Steenson, and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, with more to come from the likes of Matt Jones, Anab Jain, Dan Hill, and many, many more.

Earthrise on Vimeo

Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders describe the overview effect they experienced on the Apollo 8 mission …and that photo.

FOREVERYONE.NET

I linked to this a while back but now this great half hour documentary by Jessica Yu is ready and you can watch the whole thing online: Tim Berners-Lee, the birth of the web, and where the web has gone since.

In the scenes describing the early web, there’s footage of the recreated Line Mode Browser—how cool is that‽

APOLLO 11 [Official Trailer] - YouTube

This documentary, made entirely with archive footage, looks like it will be amazing! I really hope I get to see it in a cinema.

Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, Apollo 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, and forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin into household names.

Aw! What about Michael Collins‽ He’s always the Ringo of the mission, even though he was the coolest dude.

Rams — Gary Hustwit

The newest Gary Hustwit film is a documentary about Dieter Rams, featuring plinkity music by Brian Eno.

Rams is a design documentary, but it’s also a rumination on consumerism, materialism, and sustainability.

» Baikonur, Earth

A new impressionistic documentary about Space City.

General Magic

A forthcoming documentary about the company spun out of Apple to create a handheld communication device …in 1990.

From mobile computing, social media, downloadable apps and e-commerce to touchscreens, emoji and USB, the products and services that now dominate the tech industry and our day-to-day lives were born at General Magic.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin Official Trailer on Vimeo

This forthcoming documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin looks like it will be very good indeed.

The Go-Betweens: Right Here

This looks like a rather good documentary about the best band in the world.