Architecture

Plot: Doug Roberts, Architect, returns from a long vacation to find work nearly completed on his skyscraper. He goes to the party that night concerned he’s found that his wiring specifications have not been followed and that the building continues to develop short circuits. When the fire begins, Michael O’Halleran is the chief on duty as a series of daring rescues punctuate the terror of a building too tall to have a fire successfully fought from the ground.Read More »

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KOCHUU is a visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition, and its impact on the Nordic building tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future and traditional concepts, nature and concrete, gardens and high-tech spaces, the film explains how contemporary Japanese architects strive to unite the ways of modern man with the old philosophies in astounding constructions. KOCHUU, which translates as “in the jar,” refers to the Japanese tradition of constructing small, enclosed physical spaces, which create the impression of a separate universe. The film illustrates key components of traditional Japanese architecture, such as reducing the distinction between outdoors and indoors, disrupting the symmetrical, building with wooden posts and beams rather than with walls, modular construction techniques, and its symbiotic relationship with water…Read More »

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It’s not unusual for pre-production publicity on a new film to revolve around the star or the director but it’s particularly rare when it focuses on a construction site. In the case of the glossy 1960 soap opera, Strangers When We Meet, directed by Richard Quine, the real star of the movie was the cliff top Bel Air home that was constructed especially for the film by architect Carl Anderson and art director Ross Bellah. Central to the storyline, the house with the ocean view is the vision of architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) who is building it for a successful novelist, Roger Altar (Ernie Kovacs), who wants something different and unique. In the course of construction, Coe, who is bored with his marriage to Eve (Barbara Rush), meets and ardently pursues Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), a sexy, blonde housewife he first encounters at his son’s elementary school when they are dropping off their children.Read More »

Synopsis

A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME

“Master” is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro’s neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho’s film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building’s residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building’s residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that’s just about the only thing they have in common – so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building.Read More »

A personal and lyrical vision of Cracow presented by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The nostalgic tone of the narrator/protagonist talks about a city he regrets having to leave.Read More »

The documentary rebuilds the life of the brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas. His relatives, friends, students and six of his major works tell the history of this iconic latinamerican modernist.Read More »

The Architect of Saint-Gaudens is a musical and choreographic film.
An architect sings, while he strolls about, about the buildings he constructed in a small village in the Pyrénées. He is accompanied by the inhabitants, who sing and dance in their homes, workplaces, and places of study.
A dialog takes shape between the architect and the population about his work, its paradoxes and its rules.Read More »

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The voices and the remembrances of May Shigenobu and Masao Adachi – the two characters of Baudelaire’s Super 8mm documentary – are presented onto the backdrop of images with different sources. From the panoramic depiction of Tokyo and Beirut, to found footage material from TV clips and films, The anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu presents itself as a contemporary Fukei Ron, a theoretical reflection on Japanese Landscape.Read More »

A cinematic homage to Peter Rice, one of the most distinguished engineers of the late 20th century. Tracing Rice’s extraordinary life and career, from his Dundalk childhood to his work on the Sydney Opera House,The Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd’s Building, to his untimely death in 1992, Marcus Robinson uses stunning time-lapse photography and revealing interviews to tell the story of a genius who stood in the shadow of architectural icons. Until now.Read More »