Documentary Club – Thursday, December 19 from 7-9pm

Dear Neighbors,

The Upper Valley has a Documentary Club now, and we hope you consider joining in the fun with this silly and educational little community. Each month we get together in Downtown White River Junction to watch a documentary, then engage in a discussion led by a community member who specializes in that topic. We will generally meet on the THIRD Thursday of the month at 7pm. Outside of the monthly meetups, we’re also assembling a list of recommended documentaries to explore – and we collect Club members’ Doc reviews/reflections, in case you’re into writing as a strategy to help guide your learning.

December’s session will be around the documentary film Helvetica (2007) by Gary Hustwit. This film was recommended by local Main Street Museum owner and curator David Fairbanks Ford, and so this month’s Club session will excitingly be taking place at the Museum! David will be our discussion leader for the evening, drawing on his extensive design history and experience in the art world. This session will take place on the evening of December 19th (our Third Thursday), beginning the screening at 7pm and wrapping up by roughly 9.

Helvetica is one of the most common and popular typefaces in modern use, and that popularity grants it a pervasiveness that effectively hides it from mindful experience. It is always around us, regularly helping us to learn new information and navigate the worlds around us, and yet it somehow exists outside of conscious attention despite the fundamental roles it plays in so many of our conscious experiences. Was it invented, or did Helvetica always exist? Does an individual get credit for its creation, or was it an iterative, crowdsourced project – a torch carried and relayed by a series of teammates all headed in the same agreed upon direction? What would happen to the world if all of the Helvetica across the United States was suddenly magically replaced with Comic Sans? Anarchy? Universal love and harmony? A degradation of comedic standards…?

We hope you join us for the Third Thursday of the Month to learn and ponder these fun thoughts in the company of some curious and silly neighbors. RSPVs are not required, but please send a note to [email protected] if you’d like to join the Documentary Club email list. Recommended documentaries and Club Member Reviews and Reflections take place on the handy website Letterboxd, so we definitely recommend getting acquainted with that site as a sort of home base for your documentary hobbyism.

Hope to hear from you!

Best wishes,
The Upper Valley Food Coop team

Public · Hosted by Upper Valley Food Coop and Main Street Museum