Films

A Pile of Ghosts

Length:
65 min
Director:
Ella Raidel
Country of production:
Austria
Chinese
in short:

A ghost story of urbanization. The last hotel, which has been condemned for demolition like the rest of the town, is still standing. The owner Charles imagines himself with a female visitor in the scenes of a Hollywood classic. The vexing interplay of documentary and fiction, in which construction workers, investors and real estate agents appear, takes place in contemporary China, where cities are built entirely on speculation, dictated by the fictions of capitalism.

Description:

A Wes Anderson-ish Singapore

Length:
29 min
Director:
Kevin Siyuan
Country of production:
Singapore
English
in short:

This documentary short film takes viewers on a photographic adventure across the island of Singapore, as it documents the changes in the built environment against the backdrop of the pandemic situation and helps viewers rediscover everything accidentally or intentionally "Wes Anderson" about Singapore.

Description:

BLOCO ARCHITECTS IN CONSTRUCTION

Length:
30 min
Director:
Jean Paulo Bergerot
Country of production:
Brazil
Portuguese
in short:

The documentary presents the daily life of an architectural firm BLOCO Arquitetos and shows as a backdrop reflections and criticisms about the relationship between architecture and the city and its works in the wild environment of the Cerrado, in the center of the country. According to them, the principles of modern architecture produced in the beginning of Brasília can still serve as inspiration for the production of an essentially Brazilian contemporary architecture connected to the challenges of the present day, especially in relation to the preservation of the region's native biome. The film was shot in two locations: Brasília and Chapada dos Veadeiros. Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, is a city planned and built in the 60's and is still today one of the main international references of modern architecture.

Description:

Best in the World

Length:
56 min
Director:
Hans Christian Post
Country of production:
Denmark
in short:

Copenhagen is an exemplary city. Exemplary in its successes. But also in the downsides that are starting to show. From a city which was in the early 1990s on the brink of bankruptcy, it has undergone a tremendous transformation and is today coined as one of the best and most liveable cities in the world. But the gains are increasingly outnumbered by noticeable losses. Today, social and economic divides between the haves and the have nots haunt both city and countryside, and more and more people are starting to ask whether the run-down city of the past was in some ways preferable. The film explores these general dilemmas. It looks at the gains and losses that Copenhagen has experienced over the last 30 years and asks what we need for the city to be in the 21st century.

Description:

Bo(i)staden: den sociala idén

Length:
59 minutes
Director:
Anders Wahlgren
Country of production:
Sweden
Swedish
in short:

Den sociala idén. En god bostad tillhör människans grundläggande behov och problemen med för få och för dyra bostäder är inte nya. Anders Wahlgren har gjort filmer om arkitektur och boende i snart 50 år. Nu ser han tillbaka på bostadsfrågan genom tiderna med exempel från sina tidigare filmer. Del 1 av 2.

Description:

Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens

Length:
1h 27 min
Director:
Tassos Langis, Yannis Gaitanidis
Country of production:
Greece
English, Modern Greek
in short:

A documentary about the most distinctive Athenian building type, the polykatoikía, and the reconstruction of the city through the life of the anonymous lay builders and their housewives, who were the most unlikely “co-authors.”

Description:

Concrete Landscape

Length:
Director:
Luiz Ferraz
Country of production:
Brazil
in short:

Concrete Landscape presents the portuguese architect Alvaro Siza through his relationship with brazil, including his family roots in Belém and investigating his only work in the country, the building of ibere camargo institution, located in Porto Alegre.

Description:

Contrapunctus V

Length:
17:30
Director:
Kenji Ouellet
Country of production:
Germany
in short:

An experimental documentary featuring Japanese urban architecture. A time capsule of sorts, centered on (biological or artificial) brain states, it makes different themes and voices converge and connect in a rhizomatic, multitasking structure reminiscent of musical counterpoint (and attention deficit behaviour symptoms).

Description:

Exterior Day: Esterno giorno

Length:
8 min
Director:
Giulia Magno
Country of production:
Italy
Italian
in short:

Inspired by a famous exchange of letters between Michelangelo Antonioni and Mark Rothko, “Esterno giorno” is an experimental love letter to Italian cinema. Following in the footsteps of the characters played by Monica Vitti, the film retraces the geography of Antonioni’s vision, pushing the boundaries between subject and landscape, fiction and reality.

Description:

Gagarine

Length:
1h30
Director:
Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh
Country of production:
Frankrike
franska
in short:

I höghuset i miljonprogramsområdet Cité Gagarine utanför Paris, drömmer 16-årige Yuri om att bli astronaut. Övergiven av sina föräldrar har bostadsområdet och människorna som befolkar det blivit hans familj. När det uppdagas att hela området ska rivas väcker det starkt motstånd. En efter en tvingas de ut ur sina lägenheter men Yuri kommer inte ut. Besatt av sin kärlek till rymden har han ett alldeles särskilt sätt att göra motstånd och när invånarna samlas för att protestera slås de av häpnad. Filmen spelades in när husen revs och är gjord i nära samarbete med de som tvingades se på när deras hem jämnades med marken.

Description:

Lelé's House

Length:
4 min
Director:
Jean Paulo Bergerot
Country of production:
Brazil
Portuguese
in short:

The non-visible life that is impregnated in the memory of a residence. The short film presents in a poetic way the house that the architect Joao Filgueiras Lima, Lelé, designed in Brasília, in the early 70s.

Description:

Light without Sun

Length:
52
Director:
Marie Ramsing, Clara Kraft, Christopher Fischlein
Country of production:
Denmark
Danish, English, French, Spanish
in short:

A documentary about Can Lis, a house designed by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon on the island of Mallorca and considered among the most significant projects of the twentieth century. Set within one day, the film reflects the sensory nature of architecture, using interviews, narrative, and choreography to challenge how buildings are documented.

Description:

Lines

Length:
1h 20
Director:
Barbora Sliepková
Country of production:
Slovakia
Slovak
in short:

Lines is a visual essay, a tangle of stories and observations, set in the exemplary post-socialist city of Bratislava; a place experiencing dynamic transformation.

Description:

Blanka is a woman in her 50s, alone in her apartment and in her life. Matuš, a young and motivated activist, hopes to become councillor of his municipality despite his lack of marketing savvy. A cool real estate agent sells the notion of a happy life through Bratislava apartments. Two collegial road workers paint road markings and when their shift is over, they drink beer in their boarding room and ponder the indifference of the city inhabitants. Danko, a queer music composer, lives in the city center with his mother in a modest flat. He takes long walks, listening to urban sounds, trying to capture the rhythm around him.

Lower Grand

Length:
10 min
Director:
Jeff Dorer
Country of production:
United States
in short:

The secret life of a street known from movies, television shows and commercials. Lower Grand chronicles the uneven recovery after the Great Recession through the aspect of this familiar setting. Depending which side you're on, its portals are a window on the upper crust of American society or its lower depths.

Description:

Miljonprogrammet ( in swedish)

Length:
1' 24
Director:
Dan Kristensson, Einar Hansson
Country of production:
Sweden
in short:

Filmskaparna syftar ge en helhetsbild av miljonprogrammet med tyngdpunkt på ett konstruktivt framtidsperspektiv, som visar områdenas viktiga roll i en hållbar samhällsutveckling. De vill ta avstamp i nuläget och dess utmaningar och en fördjupad bakgrund till miljonprogrammets bebyggelse, som kulturskatt och framgångshistoria – liksom till dess politiska tillkomst, kriser och förnyelseerfarenheter. Filmen lyfter fram erfarenheter av den viktiga forskning och utveckling som har pågått i ett 30-tal år och som sammantaget visar på stora möjligheter. Programmet utmynnar i ett antal aktuella utvecklingsprojekt.

Description:

Mr Funkis

Length:
59 min
Director:
Anders Wahlgren
Country of production:
Sweden
in short:

Filmaren Anders Wahlgren träffade den åttioårige arkitekten Sven Markelius första gången 1969 när hans sista byggnad Sverigehuset var färdigt, och de blev goda vänner. De många timslånga samtalen spelades in på band, som legat orörda i femtio år. Det är de enda intervjuer som gjorts med Markelius. Han tillhörde den mest radikala kretsen inom svensk arkitektur och ansåg att en av de viktigaste uppgifterna för en arkitekt var att rita billiga bostäder, lika aktuellt idag.

Description:

Post-Soviet Symphony

Length:
11 min
Director:
Alexey Evstigneev
Country of production:
Russian Federation
in short:

If architecture is "frozen music", then the façades of houses are its score. We explore the architecture of the post-Soviet space, from wooden architecture to Baroque and classicism, from Art Nouveau to Stalinist and Khrushchev architecture, traces of which are found in the modern panel buildings known as “human anthills”. By doing so, we are trying to understand how this centuries-old symphony could sound and look, and most importantly, we find that irreconcilable conflict of personality and mass, the unique and the typical, that is reflected even “in stone”.

Description:

Shivering wall

Length:
10 min
Director:
Tseng Yu Chin
Country of production:
Taiwan
in short:

It’s a self-examined process for assess your present time. The smog represented a spiritual inside a space. It could be the spiritual from you or others. It makes you look at yourself in a different angle, but you’re still in the group. What would you do and what’s the connection between you and others?

Description:

Soft City

Length:
Director:
David Sim
Country of production:
in short:

A visual and clear guide to building better density to create happier, more livable cities. With foreword by Jan Gehl.

Description:

Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites--separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources--to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.

Soon at your home

Length:
22 min
Director:
Lucas Bacle, Sandrine Iratçabal
Country of production:
France
French
in short:

In a small French village, a rumour about the construction of a tower in the heart of the village emerges. Is this nonsense? No one knows where this information comes from, but the idea makes you think.

Description:

Street Level/The Concrete Landscape

Length:
7:53 min
Director:
Jack Cochran, Pamela Falkenberg
Country of production:
U.S
English
in short:

Description:

The Body is a House of Familiar Rooms

Length:
10 min
Director:
Eloise Sherrid
Country of production:
U.S
English
in short:

A magical-realist window into a man's experience of chronic illness, mixing paintings with live-action documentary footage to explore his inner world and relationship with his partner.

Description:

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

Length:
1'16
Director:
Robert Wiene
Country of production:
in short:

Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets.

Description:

The Still Sound

Length:
4 min
Director:
Camilla Ferrari
Country of production:
Italy
in short:

"The Still Sound" reconstructs a real, imaginary and sometimes even melancholy italian city called Rovigo, a much longer-lived scenography than all of us human beings. Buildings, monuments, their details and streets take on another form for a few minutes, exploring the intimate vitality of their sounds to tell a new and magnificent story that is also ours, but above all it's theirs. They are all magnificent and silent sources of sounds, totally belonging to this city.

Description:

Under a Nordic Sky

Length:
60 min
Director:
Nicholas Wakeham, Marie Claude Dubois
Country of production:
Sweden
English, Swedish
in short:

After nearly a century when electric lighting has dominated the design of building interiors, a return to the use of daylight as the main ambient light source is motivated by energy, environmental, and health considerations. Addressing these issues, this film provides the essential knowledge and background to students and practicing professionals who wish to tackle the challenging endeavor of illuminating buildings under a Nordic sky using daylight as the main ambient light source, supplemented by energy-efficient electric lighting systems.

Description:

Venice Elsewhere

Length:
Director:
ELIA ROMANELLI
Country of production:
in short:

Venice is a beauty parlour in Zagreb, a giant mall in Istanbul, a Romanian village with more sheep than people, a waterway in the periphery of Berlin… Personal stories told by a handful of characters around the world who have never set foot in Venice, but who all have intimate ties with the city.

Description:

What Shall We Do With These Buildings?

Length:
28 min
Director:
Jonathan Ben-Shaul
Country of production:
Russian, Ukrainian
in short:

“What Shall We Do With These Buildings?” is a documentary-dance film which explores the legacy of Soviet architecture in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Moving fluidly between interview and dance, the film playfully investigates the dynamic impact that these buildings have on the people who live with them. What should be done with them? Should they be preserved, destroyed, repurposed? Since this film was shot, Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Kharkiv is now being shelled. Now, it serves as a snapshot of an independent, hopeful Ukraine trying to find its feet, at a time when that independence has never been more fragile.

Description:

Woodstories

Length:
16 min
Director:
Sara Nunes
Country of production:
Portugal
English, Portuguese
in short:

The documentary ‘Woodstories’, directed by Building Pictures, is a tribute to wood which tells eight stories narrated by eight architects. The story unfolds in different chapters: Memories, Application, Senses, Comfort, Sustainability, Time, Carpenters, and Industry. During the film, the architects – Carlos Azevedo, Diogo Aguiar, Diogo Zenha Morais, Francisco Vieira de Campos, Graça Correia, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, João Mendes Ribeiro, Laura Lupini, Luís Sobral and Manuel Aires Mateus – discuss the importance of wood in Portuguese architecture from the time we were born until the future.

Description: