The Vision Behind. Technological and social innovations in corporate films

December 10 to 14 2007 

The first film in cinema history is already an "image film” for a company: in the winter of 1895 the Lumière brothers shoot Workers Leaving the Factory. The factory in question was their own, the Lumière factory.

Two years later, at the Grand Café in Paris, they presented commercials which were incorporated into the cinema programme. Such "filler films" have continued to be part of cinema culture right up to this day. Nonetheless, the genre of corporate film has always been denied acceptance into the official canon of film history.

The film series The Vision Behind draws attention to this gap, reconstructing some of the fault lines in the filmic presentation of companies and their products. Corporate films do not necessarily follow the dictates of the client: in the tug-of-war between the avant-garde, censorship and corporate intervention, many directors of such films insist on retaining an experimental character in their works.

Their films are created using diverse technologcial innovations, unconventional stories, abstract visual montage and sound compositions, as well as extravagant borrowings from Hollywood cinema. Many of these works go far beyond transporting mere information in conformity with business directives, and can still be viewed today for their artistic value.

Corporate films are based on economic interests, product advertising, the popularization of specialized knowledge and strategies for improving the firm's image, but they also give insights into social and political contexts and various cultures of perception, in addition to their artistic worth.

The series consists of six programmes with a total of over 50 films. Alongside several little-known or anonymous filmmakers, many artists and directors of renown are also represented: Ingmar Bergman, Chris Cunningham, Oskar Fischinger, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Kubelka, George Lucas, Walther Ruttmann, Richard Serra, Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo, and others.

 
A project of the Siemens Arts Program, "The Vision Behind" was curated by Florian Wüst and Ramón Reichert. The publishing house Vorwerk 8 has released a new book to accompany the series, examining the corporate film from a cultural and iconographical vantage point.