‘From dream to reality!’ The 1960s spoof that marked the dawn of self-aware advertising

At its height in the 1940s and ’50s, the now-defunct Calvin Company of Kansas City, Missouri was one of the largest and most successful producers of advertising films in the United States. With Your Name Here (1960), Calvin Company offered a wry, tongue-in-cheek satire of its own advertising style. Beginning with a generic retelling of human history before transitioning to a jingoistic story of American exceptionalism, a narrator declares that, for all our collective striving, ingenuity and brilliance, happiness still somehow eludes us. So what’s the solution? A more satisfying tobacco-smoking experience, of course. Or more leisure time. Or whatever it is that your product, service or institution offers. While today the self-aware commercial is a genre unto itself, it’s somewhat jarring to see the form so cleverly executed in this peculiar short, released at the dawn of the Mad Men era – a time when exceeding earnestness in advertising was very much still in fashion.

For this version of the film, Aeon’s video programmer and producer Tamur Qutab provided digital enhancements to the picture and sound.

How scars continue to shape the mind long after the tissue has settled

Whether born of an accident or an illness, every accumulated scar has in some way shaped the lived experience of the person who carries it. But, even as every scar tells a life-altering story, it’s considered rather tactless to ask someone about their physical marks. This short documentary from the UK directors Rebecca Lloyd-Evans and Laura Dodsworth breaks the taboo. Reaching far beneath the skin, Lloyd-Evans and Dodsworth profile five people with significant scars that vary greatly in appearance and origin – from injuries of war to marks of self-harm to wounds present from birth. In doing so, the film explores the potential for scars to fundamentally alter the way people view themselves, others and the world at large.

Can you express sounds with sights? An artist takes a crack at animating jazz piano

For his short film Liza, the French animator Bastien Dupriez aimed to create ‘a kind of visual transcription’ of the George Gershwin song Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away) (1929), as performed by the French musician Jean-Michel Pilc. As the rollicking jazz piano builds, the frame splashes with abstract shapes and colours, as well as hints of human forms. The resulting effect is of visuals built to accompany and respond to the mood of the music, rather than the much more familiar inverse experience. Beyond serving as a mesmerising slice of audiovisual eye candy – and it certainly is that – the piece also provokes a bevy of intriguing questions about our multisensory experience of art.

Ceramic coral reefs and sawdust houses – the architects 3D-printing the future from scratch

3D printing is moving beyond plastics: instead, the American architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello (working together as Rael San Fratello) use a wide array of recycled and organic materials – everything from car tyres and sawdust to grape skins and coffee grounds. Via experimentation with such novel substances, the duo aims not only to create more sustainable approaches to 3D printing, but to brainstorm innovative solutions to pressing societal problems too. This video from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York takes viewers inside Rael San Fratello’s ‘print farm’ in Northern California, and spotlights two of their most promising initiatives – a project to support coral reef restoration via protective clay ‘coral seeding units’, and a prototype cabin built from ceramic and sawdust tiles to help solve California’s affordable housing crisis.

What a ‘good death’ can look like, in the quiet company of a compassionate stranger

‘When I can’t do things for someone else, I simply become unhappy,’ says Loes Prakke, waiting outside the front door of a small house late one evening. She rings, enters and introduces herself to Joop, an elderly man who is sitting up in bed and clearly sick. She tells him she’ll be staying through the night, so that Joop’s loved one, Ria, can get some rest. After acknowledging his hardship, she offers to spend some time chatting so they might get to know one another a bit.

The third volunteer to watch over Joop in his illness, Loes’s warm presence is a simple yet deeply meaningful gift to the couple – a reassurance that Joop will be cared for and comfortable during this final phase of his life. In her short documentary The Final Nights, the Dutch director Reneé van der Ven matches the gentle presence of her subject with her filmmaking, capturing Loes’s extraordinary gift for compassion with a respectful observational style. In chronicling Loes and Joop’s nights together, the film quietly reflects on the meaning of a ‘good death’, as well as the power of human connection in its many distinct forms.