A gesture of post-mortem cinema: spaces devoid of tangible life take on a spectral atmosphere, as though considered through the eyes of the departed. A spatial expedition through a deconstructed Berlin ensues, existential in its storytelling and political in its focus on an individual's trauma.

Canoas was shot for the São Paulo biennial in 2010. Biennials are collective exercises in the projection of national identity,
and Guimarães was interested in the ways in which the Casa das Canoas, the house that architect Oscar Niemeyer built
for himself in the early 1950s, had achieved iconic status in Brazilian cultural lore. In the early 50s and during Juscelino
Kubitschek’s presidency, from 1956-61, the house had not only served as a location for important cultural gatherings but—
through its tropical sensuousness—helped establish the myth of Brazil as an emerging modern paradise, serving as the
postcard of a country yet to be.

Canoas was shot with a mix of actors and non-actors, and before filming Guimarães had proposed to each of them, thequestion of whether or not modernist architecture in Brazil was in most cases a luxury item for the wealthy, dependant on underpaid labor and whether the notion of Brazilian racial democracy and social mobility was blatantly flawed. Restaging the glamorous gatherings that had taken place there, the film probes the ways in which the past lingers into the present. The 2010 biennial came at a point of almost euphoric optimism about Brazil’s future. The country had been largely unaffected by the global recession and was buoyed in anticipation of the infrastructural improvements that would result from hosting the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. Yet now, as crisis and infamy take hold of the political scene, in spite of volatility and violence, one can’t help but look at the strange, extravagant forms of Niemeyer’s house and think that Brazil remains full of potential.

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An antidote to crowded cities and the spread of disease such as tuberculosis, the sanatorium as an architectural model both encapsulated and concretised the ideals of Modernism.Designed and constructed to prioritise the health of its residents, it provided a medical context – treatment made manifest through architecture. Designed by Alvar Aalto and completed in 1932, the Paimio sanatorium was conceived as “a medical instrument” to deliver respite and recovery through rest, fresh air, and sunlight. An ideal implemented on a holistic scale: furniture, interior architecture, architectural design, and the building’s location within vast panoramic pine forests.

The small details captured on camera are gently revealed during the film, like small shining objects hidden beneath a soft cloth – the artist draws back the felt blanket to share her viewpoint as visitor to the Paimio sanatorium. The sunshine yellow linoleum that creeps up the walls, negating the corner where floor meets wall, softening the hard lines, eliminating that groove where dirt, dust and germs might collect. The cut-out in the wall profile which allows the window to open inwards, presumably enabling both cleaning and the inward flow of fresh air; the timeless mechanisms of the windows, demonstrated by the sanatorium’s guide, who gesticulates animatedly in explanation. All are observed and recorded in a careful gathering of details both human and architectural (Excerpt from the text “On Caring and Carrying” by Jas Hinks)

If you were to design your dream house now that you're at the end of your life, what would it look like? This question from the filmmaker to her father, retired architect Karlhans Pfleiderer, is the starting point of Das Retirée or the last house of my father. Slowly but surely, the house takes form, first drawn on shifting layers of transparent paper, then glued into a scale model. Between the words and the gestures, the film of the daughter becomes the father’s last house, a space in which unspoken words, unfulfilled desires can appear, disclosing coping-mechanisms that have survived several generations.

Seasonally, street sleepers in Kwun Tong Public Pier need to move out like the tide falls during the pier clearance by authorities, and move back to the pier like the tide rises afterwards. A mobile unit prototype is built with street sleepers themselves to deal with the seasonal clearance.. By enhancing the efficiency of moving in and out, the project hope to stretch the tension between authorities, public and street sleepers.

"Ephemeral Landmark" is a thought-provoking and visually captivating performance that delves into the profound impacts of rapid urbanisation on the Zhuihong Bridge Scenic Spot in Suzhou, China. The film centers around a site-specific performance art piece, brought to life by a British artist and accompanied by a commissioned soundtrack composed by Roberto Iguña.

FANTOOMWIJK is the urgent, unsettling, and experimental work by director Ravi Sandberg, about the Tweebosbuurt in Rotterdam. The bespoken neighborhood was demolished to make way for luxury housing, forcing residents to leave their homes. FANTOOMWIJK gives voice to the evicted locals of a neighborhood that was once a bustling part of the city. A gripping short film about the human cost of urban development, representing the global issue of gentrification in big cities.

Acclaimed architect, urban planner and theorist Moshe Safdie achieved worldwide recognition when his very first building, Habitat 67, proved to be eminently viable. The pioneering housing project was designed around Safdie’s guiding metaphor—“For Everyone A Garden”—which espouses his belief that green space, natural light and fresh air are basic human rights. Five decades later, the foundational principles of his design philosophy seem more important than ever before.

Storyline : Glythe finds herself in the middle of brutalist futuristic constructions, replacing the organic environment that she used to know. The bare building materials start moving and dissolving into sand, reminding Glythe of the magic that she once recognized in the organic world. Surreal elements of digital art and the memory of a dreamy garden will help her find peace, freedom of motion and happiness in the artificial environment that now surrounds her.

While home office became an everyday option, Good Life is a gentle and critical look at a co-living startup, where the vision for 24/7 integration of work, networking, self-management and private life is being tested with even higher, limitless and global ambition. Guided by observations and questioning of the two female directors, the new world of innovation, insecure jobs, efficiency, flexibility and personal adaptation is put under test. What happens when corporate storytelling becomes part of one's innermost self and community becomes a commodity?

The short tableau documentary "How shall we comfort ourselves." takes us on a journey to a dozen repurposed church buildings in the Netherlands. From a fitness gym to a hardcore rave, all Inside the same walls where religion once was practiced. This film dogmatically explores our ever-evolving society and its endless search for meaning.

Against the post-industrial landscape of Detroit, visitors arrive from the sky in search of knowledge. They find nothing but traces of civilization, and a coded transmission between the images and sounds of the city.In Detroit, the emptiness evokes a dream from the past: the capitalist dream of Fordism derived in a Lo-Tech nightmare. Its streets, their scale unbalanced in relation to the life on them, and its abandoned industrial structures, reflect the possibility of a programming failure in capitalism in the heart of its Mecca, the United States. Now, more than ever, after witnessing how images that belong to future dystopian worlds have become a reality during confinement, the empty spaces are a reminder of our fragility. But, camouflaged in the empty space, there are forms of resilience that want to electrify the Inner City with Hi-Tech dreams from Lo-Tech realities.

MOVE is an experimental short film that explores the influence of architecture to human psyche. The experimental short film emphasizes the physical exploration of the “Plattenbau” - an architecture of prefabricated concrete block flats that was typical of East Germany. It questions the relationship between body and space.

A retired architect recounts the tender story of discovering his passion for architecture from a young age and his journey to becoming one of the most important leading figures of brutalist architecture in Guatemala.

One in six people live in a slum, a squat, or any other precarious dwelling. Director Jean-Nicolas Orhon gives us an intimate look at the inhabitants who, through resilience and ingenuity, have built these homes. From India and New Jersey via France, Quebec and Morocco, get a new perspective on these communities.

Architecture, like anything else during the Soviet period, was under strict centralized supervision. While art and grandmonuments were expected to advance the state narrative of communism as paradise on earth, sometime sthe benign bus stops were overlooked. As a result, hundreds of architecturally distinctive bus stops arenow scattered across the former Soviet Republic. Built by individuals who decided to follow their own artistic urges, they found a way of expressing local and artisticideas, in this small form. Their bus stops were built as quiet acts of creativity against overwhelming state control.

In 2002, Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig came across his first of these distinctive pieces of architecture, and has since pioneered a bus stop hunting trend from Kiev to Vladivostok. The bus stops he has chronicled represent an astonishing variety of original styles and types, from the strictest Brutalism to exuberant whimsy. Herwig’s resulting photography books have become international bestsellers and are critically praised as gems on architecture and cold war history.

Shot over a period of 7years, the documentary Soviet Bus Stops follows Herwig on several bus stop hunts, listening in as he seeks answers as to how these unique creations came to exist. Puzzled by their origins, and without historical records, Herwig tracks down several of the creators and finds inspiration and a strengthened belief that the special bus stops need to be remembered.

Today, cursed by thememory of the era in which they were created, many bus stops have been torn down or disregarded as strange and embarrassing. Few people see them as the phenomenon Herwig does. He considers them to be one of the largest and most diverse architectural collections in existence. Their rejection of established forms is key to this appreciation. Herwig’s twenty year-long efforts in photographing hundreds of bus stops is an attempt to memorialize them before they are all demolished.

Soviet Bus Stops accompanies Herwig on his unforgettable road trip, as he meets some of the humble and charming bus stop creators from Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus, and Lithuania. The remaining bus stops represent the stories of people who created small acts of poetry against all odds

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In architecture, even the best of projects cannot be considered truly finished and complete without the people who will spontaneously inhabit it. "The opening" develops from this important initial assumption and shows, through a fantastic and metaphorical story, the active role of the inhabitants of all designed spaces.

TXL: the airport code for Berlin Tegel. TXL, three letters, that paved the way for two young graduates to a worldwide recognized career in architecture.

Enchanted by the vibrant Slovak folk culture, Japanese animation artist Kaoru Furuko and Swedish musician Christian Wellbo embarked on an eight-year artistic journey into Slovak folklore, folktale, and music. Their shared adventure birthed the idea of this audiovisual sketchbook. To weave the visual tapestry, a collage was created from Kaoru's visual sketches, animations, journals and video documentation. Intertwined with the visuals, echoes of old Slovak folk songs are reimagined in the pulsating beats of Christian's techno music.

Mini series about Belgian contemporary architecture commissioned by Wallonie-Bruxelles Architecture made of 9 uncommon very short episodes (2 min max.) focusing on user experience in contemporary buildings designed by Belgian architecture studios. Here are the five first episodes. If you like them just ask for more !

We are all aging, so are buildings. This film is rooted in an anonymous residential building in the center of Mexico City, one with 70 years of history being born, lived, earthquake-destructed, abandoned, repaired, rejuvenated, cared for, and so on. Dancing between observation and imagination, it unearths architecture as a living object, and redefines the beginning and the end of architectural design. Using the digital camera to access a series of spatial tools, this films embraces photogrammetry, data processing software, plotting machine, and most importantly, our eyes, to build an alternative literacy that gently questions established forms of design authorship. We need to be better observers before we can become better designers. Living in a world that is saturated with modernism buildings boomed in the last century, which have, to different extents, started to show signs of crumbling, it is crucial for us to reflect the existing built environment and question - how will we live together? Solutionism is not the offering, but rather, an outlook for re-discovering architecture as life-long projects.