I just got word of this amazing looking film about poster design and the counter-culture that’s associated with it. It’s directed by Iranian born Canadian film maker Eileen Yaghoobian and her film focuses on the subversive culture of rock posters in North America and the unique characters that design them.

Their art subverts popular American Culture; taking little pieces and rebuilding into controversial, often obscene, frequently vulgar but always strikingly beautiful poster designs that on the face tell you when a band is playing but with closer inspection reveal very different messages. The artists and designers are as idiosyncratic as their work. I can’t think of another film that focuses in this much detail on the visual elements of the scene and not just the music.

The film has already debuted at the Montreal Film World Film Festival but is being shown again at SXSW for those lucky enough to be in attendance. For those like me who are the wrong side of the Atlantic a DVD will be out in April (and since we’re all cool and have multi-region DVD players we’ll be able to watch it). www.diedyoungstayedpretty.com

I’ll be featuring some of the artists from the film among others when I get my ass in gear.