New documentary explores modern design

Posted by Elena del Valle on July 17, 2024

Modernism, Inc. poster

Photo (and screener): First Run Features

Using archival footage and interviews Jason Cohn explores post-war design and Eliot Noyes, one of the leading figures of the modern design movement, in Modernism, Inc., a 79-minute documentary from Bread & Butter Films and First Run Features. The documentary was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, IBM Corporation, The Better Angels Society, Jeannine and Jonathan Lavine (through the Library of Congress) and the Noyes Family. His adult children are among those interviewed.

The film, narrated by Sebastian Roché, is scheduled to open in New York on July 19, 2024 at IFC Center and in Los Angeles on August 9, 2024 at Laemmle’s Royal. Cohn plans to appear in person at both openings.

Per the film Noyes, an architect born in 1910, was one of the leading pioneers of modern design during the mid-century, post-war boom in the United States. Educated by Walter Gropius at Harvard, Noyes, according the the film, “did more than anyone to align the Modernist design ethos to the needs of ascendant corporate America.”

The film follows his impact on residential architectural design as well as on companies like IBM and Mobil Oil, and the International Design conference. That influence, the film proposes, reached many in the business community open to the up and coming ideas about the role and importance of design. Some pointed out that he also became the symbol of design’s close ties with corporate America and its excesses. Noyes passed away in 1977.

Cohn was writer, director and editor for the film. Camille Servan-Schreiber was producer. Kevin Jones also edited. Steven Emerson was the music composer.