MODEL

MODEL shows male and female models at work on TV commercials, fashion shows, magazine covers, and advertising for a variety of products, including designer collections, fur coats, sports clothes and automobiles. The models are seen at work with photographers whose techniques illustrate different styles of fashion and product photography. The business aspect of running an agency is also shown: interviewing prospective models, career counseling, arranging portfolios, talking with clients, and planning trips. The film presents a view of the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television and fantasy.

RELEASED 1980, 129 MINUTES, B&W

We have all the fascination of looking into another world and none of the annoyance of being told what to think about it… his camera, like the eye, is not merely passive. It has the power to focus on something particular, to observe it and to be the means of our intelligence about it… MODEL is as much about methods of photography and filming which are, in varying degrees, in contrast to his own, as it is about the world of models.

–Mary Frazier, (London) Times Literary Supplement

In MODEL, he shows us the business side of an agency, photography sessions, models talking, playing, and wasting time. He highlights the mad perfectionism of TV-commercial- makers —rehearsals, retakes, huge crews, anxieties, tantrums, and exhaustion, all for a few seconds of film selling hosiery.

–David Denby, New York Magazine