Directed by Jean Rouch.
Social & External
In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.
This film is a portrait of unique cultural space for Spirits, Gods and People. While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cities, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century - Bamboo Theatre.
A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.
In 1959, a government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, Neutra agreed. Thus began an unlikely friendship that led to the design and construction of an iconic mid-century modern masterpiece.
The British architect based in Stockholm looks back on major projects of a long career inspired by European Modernism combined with his personal sensitivity to nature and community. Erskine is especially valued for his vital understanding of social interaction, exemplified in commissions for universities and housing complexes built from Scandinavia to Italy. The architect takes the camera on a tour of his buildings while offering revealing comments and interpretations.
Focusing on the Matta-Viel complex, the immediate environment, the program, the materiality, the community of neighbors and its architects and what they represented in the modern Latin American architectural panorama.
Across two countries, France and Algeria, and five cities, Mohamed Gholam takes us south to tell us about the earthen and vernacular-inspired architecture of André Ravéreau. Passing through Lyon, Marseille, Algiers, and Djelfa, this adventure will take us to Ghardaïa, in the Algerian desert. The documentary presents the following buildings: L'Orangerie in Lyon, the Village Terre de l'Isle-d'Abeau in Villefontaine, the Unité d'Habitat or Cité Radieuse in Marseille, L'Aérohabitat in Algiers, the Palais des Raïs or Bastion 23 in Algiers, the Hôtel des Postes in Ghardaïa, and the low-cost housing of Sidi Abbaz de Bounoura.
Making Dust is an essay film, a portrait of the demolition of Ireland's second largest Catholic Church, the Church of the Annunciation in Finglas West, Dublin. Understanding this moment as a 'rupture', the film maps an essay by architectural historian Ellen Rowley on to documentation of the building's dismantling. Featuring oral interviews recorded at the site of the demolition and in a nearby hairdressers, the film invites viewers to pause and reflect on this ending alongside the community of the building. The film is informed by Ultimology, and invites its audience to think about the life cycles of buildings and materials, how we mourn, what is sacred, how we gather, what we value and issues of sustainability in architecture.
Arata Isozaki: Early Work in Japan takes a detailed look at the architect's pieces, exploring applauded projects such as the EXPO '70 Osaka Festival Plaza, Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Kitakyushu Municipal Library. The extraordinary series of architectural breakthroughs made during this time contributed significantly to the evolution of contemporary architecture worldwide, and eventually gained him his first foreign commission
Ninety-year-old sound artist and comedian Henry “Sandy” Jacobs lives a quirky existence at the end of Sunnyside Drive, a steep and winding dirt road washed by fog from the Pacific Ocean. Sixty feet down the hill lives his eccentric 84-year-old friend and neighbor, architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Daniel Liebermann. These extraordinary old men, influential artists in the 1950s and ’60s, continue, each in their own way, to search the world for perfection. Sunnyside takes us to an extraordinary place, a microcosm with its own distinctive rhythm and remarkable inhabitants. It is a film about creativity, the capacity to dream and, ultimately, the transience of life.
A modern explorer leads us on a global journey to discover how nine of the world's greatest architects are shaping our future.
The architect André Ravéreau spent a large part of his life in Algeria, he is today an essential reference for Algerian builders of several generations. His daughter Maya, an architect herself, accompanies us to the places of his creations and his research, in the Mzab first where he lived, created, trained other architects in the "desert workshop" and had the oases of the Mzab classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inspired by tradition to better innovate as in the construction of the Ghardaïa post office, or in that of a very surprising villa... Then in Algiers where he worked to preserve the ancestral heritage of the Casbah, faithfully describing the principles of his construction in line with current concerns, such as the choice of environmentally friendly materials and avoiding energy waste, as testified by the architect Yasmine Terki, a great specialist in earth materials.
Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.
Secluded from view by nine-meter-high walls and composed of 980 buildings, the Forbidden City in Beijing is the largest imperial palace ever built in the world. Three majestic structures form its center and host the city's ceremonies, each of which is considered an architectural masterpiece. In 1406, construction of the Forbidden City was launched at the initiative of one of China's most powerful sovereigns and founder of the Ming dynasty: Yongle. Endowed with divine power, the construction has already resisted more than 200 earthquakes.
