Architects
Herzog & de Meuron have been commissioned to build the National Stadium for the 2008
Olympics. The architects have another project in progress in China where they are building
an entire district for 300,000 people in Jinhua, a city with three million inhabitants.The
documentary shows how Chinese culture affects the work of the architect: The specific
architectonic form and the struggle to achieve it give us an insight into society, culture
and everyday life in China.
Fabiano Maciel • Brazil • 90 mins • 2006
A
documentary on the life and work of the greatest of modern Brazilian architects, Oscar
Niemeyer. In a relaxed atmosphere, the architect tells how his main projects were
conceived - among these Brasília, the French Communist Party headquarters and Mondadori
Publishers in Milan. He
talks also of politics, of friends, of women, and of Brazil. He speaks out vehemently for
invention and creativity, which he considers vital in present times. Filmed in six cities
in Brazil, and in France, England, Italy, Algeria, Portugal and the United States, the
film also includes unpublished and rare images.
Koolhaas
Houselife is a film about one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture of recent
years: the house in Bordeaux designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA. Unlike most movies about
architecture, this feature focuses less on explaining the building; its structure and its
virtuosity than on letting the viewer enter into the invisible bubble of the daily
intimacy of one of the icons of contemporary architecture. An exclusive interview with Rem
Koolhaas opens a larger debate about current architectural representation, its impositions
and its issues relative to the international market.
Gary
Burns, Canada’s king of surreal comedy, joins forces with journalist Jim Brown to
craft a vivid account of The Late Suburban Age. Sprawl is eating the planet. Politicians
call it growth. Developers call it business. The Moss family call it home. Turning the
documentary genre inside out, Burns and Brown rummage through a toybox of cultural
references. From Jane Jacobs to The Sopranos to consider what happens when cities get sick
and mutate. Cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin evokes an eerie dystopian monoculture while
the soundtrack features songs from Joey Santiago of The Pixies.
The
Academy Award winning documentary is about sculptor and architect Maya Lin who, at age 21,
designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The film tells the gripping
story behind the Vietnam Memorial and explores a decade of her creative work. Maya Lin’s
design of the Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women’s Table, and the Juniata Peace
Chapel reveals her ability to address major issues of our times through the healing power
of art.
Once
upon a time there was a tiny sugar town in tropical north Queensland called Tully. Tully
was a very prosperous town until one day Brazil decided to dump its sugar stockpile on the
global market. The townsfolk called a meeting to save the town from financial disaster.
One man stood up and proposed building The World’s Biggest Gumboot in honour of Tully’s
Australian record rainfall of 7.98 metres in 1950.
When
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports
of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate.
Five
years after his first appearance, Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot returns with Mon
Oncle, a film set along the dividing line between Paris’ past and its future. Aligned
(as is the film) with the former, Hulot lives in a colorful, overpopulated Parisian
neighborhood and, lacking employment, spends his days waiting to pick up his adoring
nephew from school and subsequently escorting him to his parents’ ultra-modern house.
When
long-estranged father, dreamer and visionary architect, Glen Small bequeaths to his
daughter the task of writing his biography, she answers instead with an irreverent film
about his precarious career and rocky private life - while he is still alive. Her father
has always called himself a genius; Lucia Small is torn. On the one hand she fancies the
idea that her dad might be amongst the undiscovered greats, but she also wonders if maybe
he isn’t suffering from a giant ego. My Father, The Genius explores the precarious
framework on which a career and family are built.
