L'Hôtel de ville : Mégastructure parisienne

Живые камни Саксайуамана

Sacsayhuamán, an ancient citadel amidst the Peruvian Andes, is an architectural marvel. It was built more than 900 years ago, and no living person knows how such large rocks were fitted so perfectly into walls. This documentary takes us on a tour of Sacsayhuamán, offering a brief history of the site, and clues that may help to its understand how it was made. It was edited from photos and video taken in July 2012, when Russian geophysicists conducted soil research there, at the request of Peru's Ministry of Culture.

Tokyo Ride

Revisiting the genre of the road movie in a very diaristic and personal way, the film takes us on board architect Ryue Nishizawa’s vintage Alfa Romeo (Giulia) for a day long wandering in the streets of Tokyo.

L'amatore

The memory of Piero Portaluppi, a Milanese architect who reached the peak of his fame during the 20 years of the Fascist regime, comes back to life, both through the rediscovery of his work today and in a previously unpublished film diary in 16 mm, shot and edited throughout his lifetime. A man of great charm and power, Portaluppi lived through a grandiose but tragic era with ironic detachment, as if dancing across things as he created beauty. History marches on implacably, radically transforming the arena in which the eclectic artist and his large family lived and worked.

Toorumi Pojad

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.

Orsay, les grandes métamorphoses

Inaugurated in 1986 by François Mitterrand, a link between the Louvre and Pompidou, Orsay houses the largest collection of Impressionist art in the world. Project after project, the museum has been transformed to modernize and welcome more visitors, while preserving its historic character. Challenges taken up with each new project.

Hongkongs geheime Stadt

Not many people know that there is in the center of Hong Kong, a city of 50,000 inhabitants that escape authority, a city which holds no law and no order, the ‘walled city’. Never before has a television crew been allowed to enter this labyrinth. Christa Wesemann, an Austrian documentary filmmaker, has achieved this for the first time. The recordings from the ‘walled city’ are breathtaking pictures, as it has never seen the world. The history and daily flow in Walled City are ruled by the ‘triad’, a Chinese crime syndicate.

Gaudí, l’arquitecte de Déu

“Gaudí, l’arquitecte de Déu” is a story of faith, of overcoming, about five lay that decided to create an assossiation to demonstrate that Gaudí deserves one of most valuable titles of the Church: beatification. The Pro-Beatification Association of Antoni Gaudí has been working more than 25 years to manage to beatify the architect of Reus, picking up all witnesses and proofs that demonstrate that Gaudi lived like a beatus and, the most difficult part, wiaiting for a miracle to happen attributed do Gaudí himself, an essential condition for his beatification. The documentary will follow this case, showing Gaudi’s life and work from a new outlook, more intimate and linked to spirituality and beliefs of the architect.

Jean Nouvel: Guthrie Theater

French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once-industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out onto the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.

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

Petra: Secrets of the Ancient Builders

In the heart of the Jordanian desert, the ancient city of Petra is full of mysteries. How was this architectural wonder created over 2,000 years ago? The technical prowess of Petra, an ancient city in southern Jordan, which was a wonder in the middle of the desert.

Begiak hesteko artean

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

Así Nació el Obelisco

The construction of the Obelisco in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Arquitetura, A Transformação do Espaço

A film in three movements. In the first one, we find a historical synthesis of Brazilian architecture, from the slaves' dwellings to the Ministry of Education Building. In the second segment, architects such as Burle Marx, Lina Bo Bardi, Grigori Warchavchik and Joaquim Cardoso talk about architecture's social function. In the third movement, inhabitants of some Brazilian cities discuss the space they live in.

Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

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.

Wiener Barock - Der Architekt dreier Kaiser

Alvar Aalto

A portrait of the renowned Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto by the radical experimental filmmaker Eino Ruutsalo. Shot in the summer of 1972 at Aalto’s experimental house in Muuratsalo the film briefly and accurately covers the growth, development and creativity of the master architect, presenting his most important work.

Inside Prora

On the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea lies one of the most megalomaniac projects built by the Nazis. The ‘Monster by the Sea’, a colossus of brickwork that stretches for kilometres, intended as a futurist holiday resort for the inhabitants of the Third Reich. A paragon of ‘guilty architecture’. Later occupied by the communist regime, it has since the fall of the Wall fallen victim to property developers who have found it a tough nut to crack. Nico Weber’s Inside Prora uncovers the storied history of a project that symbolises the utopian intentions of modernism and the emergence of mass tourism.

Alvar Aalto: tekniikka ja luonto

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) is one of the great figures of modern architecture, ranked alongside Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. This film analyses Aalto’s uniquely successful resolution of the demands and possibilities created by new technology and construction materials with the need to make his buildings sympathetic both to their users and to their natural surroundings. His inventive use of timber in particular represents both a reference to the forest landscape of Finland and a building material that is ‘warm’ and extremely adaptable. Filmed in Finland, Italy, Germany and the USA, this documentary shows how the Finnish natural environment and art traditions were essential elements in Aalto’s pioneering harmonization of technology and nature.