Fashion Spoken Here: Moritz Feed Dog Fashion Documentary Film Festival 2015

On the 15th through to the 17th of May, Barcelona will welcome the first edition of the Moritz Feed Dog Barcelona Fashion Documentary Film Festival, the first event of its kind to be held in Spain. At its core, Moritz Feed Dog Barcelona Fashion Documentary Film Festival endeavors to show the general public the richness and complexity of fashion as a living,

breathing cultural phenomenon in constant transformation, and a reflection of society and its history. The goal of the project and the film festival is to introduce the unique world of fashion through documentaries of high cinematic quality, and of great interest to specialists and newcomers. This first edition will feature around ten fashion documentaries, with various Spanish premieres on its billboard.

This Festival was born within the context in which fashion, in the last four decades, has earned a well-deserved place in internationally-renown museums and in the cultural agendas of key international capitals. Moritz Feed Dog was born with the aim of offering a program, which – just like Beefeater.In-Edit, the other Festival organized by Inedit Producciones – focuses on the cinematographic quality of its featured documentaries, from contents to aesthetics. This initiative is dedicated to the documentary genre and to independent films with fashion as the theme, and to the embrace of the discipline as a cultural expression.

The Moritz Feed Dog program –coordinated by Charo Mora – invites viewers to embark on a journey through the fashion world, highlighting the richness of the phenomenon that cannot be explained solely through its creators – although they bring a mythological and eternally fascinating and appealing angle to the story. In fact, fashion wouldn’t be what it is without them, just as art can’t be explained without painters and sculptures, or literature without novelists or poets. So, it goes without saying that this essential role enjoys well-deserved representation at the Festival.

The festival will open with a showing of Dior and I and will include the following fashion documentaries:

Rebellious genius or lousy manager of fame? The shooting stardom and meteoric downfall of Miguel Adrover remains fascinating more than a decade later. What was the deal with Miguel Adrover, the Mallorcan farmers’ son that was set to become the next John Galliano in the year 2000? The sector’s insiders that have been fascinated with this story for over a decade, answer the question, recalling that Adrover – a genius in the minds of many – had no hope of survival after presenting a collection inspired by Taliban clothing two days after 9/11. But this documentary, which includes interviews with Suzy Menkes and Harold Koda, of The Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s Costume Institute adds new undertones to this latter-day fable that questions notions of success and failure in an industry that’s both ruthless and volatile.

Christian Louboutin: Top of the Heels. Dir: Farida Khelfa (France / 2014 / 52 min) VOSE, Saturday, May 17th, 8 pm

An enlightening conversation with the man that elevated the female shoe to fetish status. At one point in the documentary, David Lynch, self-professed fan of, and collaborator with the shoemaker asks the $64 million question: “What’s with the red sole? And Louboutin reveals that in 1982 he grabbed a bottle of nail polish and painted the underside of a shoe to look more like his drawings, or better said, so that reality would approach his ideals. And, as he clarifies, because red isn’t a color, it’s the “the symbol of femininity”. The famous designer psychoanalyses himself in front of the camera in this mini-film and tackles issues of identity, family and fetishism that one wouldn’t expect to find in a the world’s most fabulous and frivolous celebration of footwear.

Fresh Dressed/ Dir: Sacha Jenkins (France, United States / 2014 / 84 min). Saturday, May 16th, 9:45 pm

There’s a (love) story that explains the style that rules the street and the catwalk: the eternal romance between fashion and hip-hop. They haven’t a stick of furniture at home, but step out decked out from head to toe in Ralph Lauren Polo. Or fake a sprain because they can only get their hands on a single Adidas sneaker. Rob a house to bag a perfume. What hip-hoppers are prepared to do to stay fresh and fly goes far beyond wearing a medallion. This documentary that captivated Sundance, explores the Afro-American style from slavery to Kanye West, and features an all-star lineup of talking heads. From the right honorable Mr. Kardashian, to Riccardo Tisci, Pharrell Williams, Dapper Dan and André Leon Talley.

Iris, Dir: (the late and much-missed) Albert Maysles (United States / 2014 / 83 min) Friday, May 15th, 9:45pm and Sunday, May 17th, 4:15pm

Much more than the senior fashion icon: If the Bouviers of Grey Gardens had a long lost first cousin – pragmatic, Jewish and jovial – she’d be called Iris Apfel. It’s no surprise that this nonagenarian caught Albert Maysles’ attention, and became the centerpiece of his last documentary before he died. The legendary director of Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens took it upon himself to portray her as something more than just fashion’s greatest darling. It pays off, even if only to see how she flirts with Kanye West, or to learn how to haggle a la the insatiable Apfel, who ranks a Balenciaga frock equal in value to an African beaded necklace, and to contemplate (with a lump in our throat), the moving love story of her and her husband Carl, who we see turn 100 without losing an iota of humor or curiosity.

Mods, Rockers And the Bank Holiday Mayhem. Dir: Rebecca Whyte (United Kingdom / 2014 / 60 min). Friday, May 15th, 8:15pm

Timeshift: Mods, Rockers and Bank Holiday Mayhem (BBC Four) is an excellent, evocative documentary about the Whitsun Bank Holiday 50 years ago, when the two subcultures hopped onto their mopeds or motorbikes respectively, and descended upon seaside resorts to scoff chips, skim stones and shelter from the inevitable rain in amusement arcades. Oh, and smash the town up during violent confrontations.

Notebook on cities and clothes. Dir: Win Wenders (France, Germany / 1989 / 79 min) Sunday, May 17th, 9:30 pm

The unbearable lightness of fashion – or how a jacket converted Wim Wenders into a Yohji Yamamoto fanboy.

When the Pompidou museum approached the German director to shoot a film “in the context of fashion” he didn’t try to mask his disdain “Clothes? what kind of weirdo would be into that?” said, or thought – with a permissible degree of arrogance – the man that put Nastassja Kinski in that angora sweater and not another in Paris, Texas. But then, Wenders remembered his sublime Yamamoto jacket, which made him feel like he was wearing armor, and reminded him of his father. The director follows the Japanese designer through Tokyo and Paris and taking filmic notes on fashion, the nature of the process and even on documentary as a genre.

The next black + Round Table. Dir: David Dworsky and Victor Kohler (Sweden / 2014 / 47 min)

Sustainable is the new black. And digital.

These are the pioneers that work in fashion as it is right now, and will be within 50 years. In just 10 years, between 2000 and 2010, fashion consumption rocketed 47% thanks to the standardization of so-called fast fashion. In highly disparate locations around the globe – from a science fictionesque London lab to the R-D department of a mega-corporation like Adidas – there are pioneers already working to subvert this model that has proven ethically and environmentally unsustainable. Digital haute couture, fabric dyed without using a single drop of water or textiles fermented in green tea and yeast. Why not? It’s highly probable that this will be the face of fashion in 10, 20 or 50 years.

Traceable. Dir: Jennifer K. Sharpe (Canada, India, United States / 2014 / 68 min) Sunday, May 17th, 6:15pm

Everything you never knew about your clothes, and would prefer not to ask.

Have you ever thought about how many hands that $15.00 T-shirt has passed through? Answering that question is trickier than it seems, given that, as this documentary proves, companies no longer make things; they simply pay somebody else to make them. The Bangladesh tragedy in 2013 put the spotlight on fast fashion factories in the developing world, and this film starts there, following the thread of the Indian cotton producer all the way to the crop-top at the mall, celebrating the work of those that refuse to accept there’s no way back, like the founder of the Sourcemap website, or the designer Laura Seigel.

Twiggy: The Face of the 60’s. Dir: Philip Priestley (United States, France / 2012 / 52 min) Saturday, May 16th, 8:15pm

How a working class teenager without curves but with endless eyelashes became the face of Swinging London.

It’s 1965, and an ordinary London gal earned nine quid a week. She set three aside for rent, three for food and three to buying a new dress. Fashion had ascended from the ranks of generational past time and the revolution needed a face. It found it in Lesley Hornby, the daughter of a carpenter from Neasden, the place known as “the loneliest town in England”. Twiggy was, in the words of her discoverer “too short, too thin and too funny.” And to top it all off she laughed with a cockney accent! Within a few short months, she began building her empire, in which for the first time ever, a model stopped being the girl that did what the photographer said and started giving the orders.