Kubota

A film featuring architect, sculptor, and musician Nobuo Kubota in a sound-sculpture performance. From within a cage-like structure filled with traditional musical instruments and sound-making devices fashioned from ordinary objects and toys, Kubota creates an aural/visual montage of musical notes and noises. Praised by music educators as a valuable tool for teaching creativity in sound exploration and musical innovation, the film reveals the infinite percussion possibilities of simple objects and presents a portrait of a versatile performer whose imagination has led him far beyond the confines of conventional music. Directed by Jonny Silver - 1982 | 20 min

The Sea of Itami Jun

"Hello. I'm Itami Jun. I apologize for my poor Korean." Itami Jun (Yoo Dongryong), a Korean architect who was born in Japan. This film follows his life through heartwarming architectures for people that he had tried for all his life. The architecture of time that exists for the people, space and the story of an architect who walked his own way between Korea and Japan, Shimizu and Jeju.

The Power of Utopia: Living with Le Corbusier in Chandigarh

With the construction of the Indian planned city of Chandigarh, the Swiss and French architect Le Corbusier completed his life's work 70 years ago. Chandigarh is a controversial synthesis of the arts, a bold utopia of modernity. The film accompanies four cultural workers who live in the planned city and reflects on Le Corbusier's legacy, utopian urban ideas and the cultural differences between East and West in an atmospherically dense narrative.

Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto

This documentary follows 200 days in the life of contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto— a leading presence in the world of modern art. He is the winner of many prestigious awards and his photographs are sold for millions of yen at overseas auctions. The film shows the sites of the Architecture series shot in southern France, the huge installation art work at 17th Biennale of Sydney, his new work Mathematics at Provence, his art studio while working on Lightning Fields, and more. It thoroughly pursues the question Sugimoto's works pose - "living in modern times, what are these works trying to tell us?" A thrilling look into the world of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Fading City

A docu-art film about Kyiv and the contemporary problems of the capital. The film raises the issue of the dilapidated state of Kyiv's old buildings and the search for effective mechanisms to preserve the city's architectural heritage.

Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

Lasnamäe

The director asks straightforward questions in a phone call to the lead architect of the district of Lasnamäe, Malle Meelak. The topics include the bureaucracy, planning and living quality in the brutalist district of panel houses. He gets surprisingly straightforward answers because Meelak doesn't know that the call is being recorded. Later, in a public interview conducted in front of the camera, Meelak's answers are quite different.

Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

Viva El Vedado

Viva El Vedado presents the history of the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado from the last quarter of the 19th century through the Cuban Revolution and highlights its varied and outstanding architecture. Known as a cultural center of Havana, Vedado is particularly notable for its unique collection of Cuban architecture of the 20th century. The film’s goal is to introduce its audiences to the neighborhood’s remarkable architecture, its vibrant life, and the need for preserving Vedado as part of Havana’s heritage. It is a glimpse beyond tourist fantasies and stereotypes, a rare view of one of Havana’s most important neighborhoods.

Funkiskungen

Beyrouth, Le Dialogue Des Ruines

Architecture in Beirut was the second greatest victim of the civil war, with pages of ancient and modern history erased by the end of the conflict. This documentary interviews citizens calling for a reconstruction plan that would preserve Beirut’s spirit of culture and openness.

Architecture of Infinity

How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. With the help of architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli, and Álvaro Siza Vieira, artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias, and drummer Sergé “Jojo” Mayer, he tries to make sense of the world and decipher our spiritual experiences using the seemingly abstract concepts of light, time, rhythm, sound, and shape. The superb cinematography turns this contemplative search into a multi-sensory experience.

City Dreamers

Urban architecture as seen through the eyes of four female veterans in the field.

Paris, the Mystery of the Disappeared Palace

In the heart of Paris, an entire palace has disappeared. It was the very first residence of the kings of France. Long before Versailles, long before the Louvre, the Palais de la Cité stood on the most prestigious island in Paris, the historic cradle of France, facing Notre-Dame. So majestic in the Middle Ages, this palace has become a ghost of history. Over the centuries, this architectural masterpiece has almost completely disappeared. A trio of experts will resurrect it in 3D. Using science and unprecedented excavations, they will track down the pieces of the puzzle to reconstruct it at its peak in the 14th century, and bring back to life those who inhabited it. From the Romans to the Vikings, from Saint Louis to the cursed kings, all have left clues of this 'Versailles of the Middle Ages'.

Der Stoff, aus dem Träume sind

What motivates people to organize communal living themselves? What ideals are behind it, how do they finance themselves, and how does life in a community work? Based on six self-managed residential buildings in Austria from the past 40 years, the documentary film "Der Stoff, aus dem Träume sind" (The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of) sets out to find answers. Filmmakers Lotte Schreiber and Michael Rieper tell these six stories by staying very close to the protagonists.

The Hermits

In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.

Architecture And Power

A history of Bucharest, as seen in the light of the totalitarian architecture, having as leading idea the reality that the Power always exposes its purposes through architecture. After five decades of communism, the reality on thee Dark Ages is still waiting to be revealed, and architecture is one of the most obvious embodiments of the ideology to whom it was builtÉ It is not a movie about faults or about guilty peoples, but about official edifices of thee communist Romania and their story.

The Hedge Theater

Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.

Bird's Nest - Herzog & de Meuron in China

Schaub and Schindelm’s documentary follows two Swiss star architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, on two very different projects: the national stadium for the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008 and a city area in the provincial town of Jinhua, China.