Chris Cunningham - Photocopier (Never Seen Levis Commercial)

What this video is

Photocopier exists at the intersection of late-1990s prestige advertising and avant-garde music video culture. Never broadcast by Levi's, it was preserved as an art object within the Palm Pictures Directors Label series — a landmark publishing venture that reframed commercial and music video directors as auteurs on par with feature filmmakers. Cunningham's Levi's work thus occupies a rare category: suppressed…

Why it matters

As an unreleased commercial, Photocopier represents a critical sub-genre: the suppressed advertising artifact. It documents the commercial industry's brief late-1990s experiment with avant-garde directors and the frequent creative misalignment that resulted. Preserved on the Directors Label DVD,…

The director

Born 15 October 1970 in Reading, Berkshire, England. English video artist and music video director. Early career included creature effects on Alien 3 (1992), character design on Alien Resurrection (1997), and concept work for Stanley Kubrick's A.I. project.…