How to Make a Book with Steidl

This observational documentary spends quality time with exacting publisher Gerhard Steidl as he designs several high-quality books. Instead of speeding up his production process, Steidl tells author Martin Parr, he is “…more interested in longtime relationships with artists." Later, Steidl says to an unidentified interlocutor that he would be rich if he only published classics like Günter Grass's The Tin Drum and Robert Frank's The Americans, but he's just as interested in more esoteric titles. During the course of the film, Steidl travels from his Göttingen home base to New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Qatar, and Vancouver to meet with Grass, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, painter Ed Ruscha, and several photographers, including Frank, Joel Sternfeld, and Robert Adams. Some of the projects are given clear explanations, others are not. Sternfeld's revolves around iPhone pictures he took in Dubai, Lagerfeld's has something to do with the House of Chanel, and Ruscha's appears to center on Jack Kerouac's On the Road. (With Frank, who relocated from Switzerland to America, and Lagerfeld, who moved from Germany to France, Steidl speaks in German, but much of the rest of the dialogue is in English.) Since no definitions accompany terms such as "die-cut," "letterpress," and "offset printing," co-directors Gereon Wetzel and Jörg Adolph assume that viewers already have some knowledge of the design and/or publishing industries. Their fly-on-the-wall approach eschews any information about Steidl's background or personal life (other than a brief mention of his somewhat disapproving father), although as a look at his day-to-day working world, it is rich with detail. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)