Gary Hustwit is a filmmaker and visual artist based in New York, and the CEO of Anamorph, a generative media studio and software company.
He has produced over 20 documentaries and film projects, including the award-winning I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the band Wilco; Oddsac, an experimental feature film by the band Animal Collective; and Mavis!, the HBO documentary about gospel/soul music legend Mavis Staples.
In 2007 he made his directorial debut with Helvetica, the world’s first feature-length documentary about graphic design and typography. He has continued to explore how design affects our daily lives with his subsequent films Objectified (2009), Urbanized (2011), Workplace (2016), and Rams (2018). The films have been broadcast on PBS, BBC, HBO, Netflix and outlets in 20 countries, and have been screened in over 300 cities worldwide. His most recent project is Eno, a documentary about musician and artist Brian Eno, which uses generative technology in its creation and exhibition. Eno premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Gary worked with punk label SST Records in the late-1980s, releasing the music of bands like Black Flag, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr. He ran the independent book publishing house Incommunicado Press during the 1990s, and started the DVD label Plexifilm in 2001. With Plexifilm, Gary released over 40 films theatrically and on home video, including work by the Maysles brothers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Andy Warhol and David Byrne.
Gary’s films have premiered at Sundance, the South by Southwest Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among others. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Helvetica, and has served on the grand juries of the Sundance Film Festival, the IFP Gotham Awards, and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Gary was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. He is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.