Social & External
To Olmsted, a park was both a work of art and a necessity for urban life. Olmsted’s efforts to preserve nature created an “environmental ethic” decades before the environmental movement became a force in American politics. With gorgeous cinematography, and compelling commentary this film presents the biography of a man whose parks and preservation are an essential part of American life.
Isamu Noguchi was a sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman. Throughout his life he struggled to see, alter, and recreate his natural surroundings. His gardens and fountains were transformations meant to bring out the beauty their locations had always possessed.
Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.
The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.
In 1947 Marcel Breuer, a fundamental figure of the Bauhaus, visited Argentina and designed the Parador Ariston, in Mar del Plata. As time goes by, the Ariston will be forgotten. The context in which it was created leads us to discover how Mar del Plata is transformed into the dream city for vacations by Argentine families and the importance of architectural heritage.
No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.
In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.
More than 2.000 years ago, Narbonne in today's Département Aude was the capital of a huge Roman province in Southern Gaul - Gallia Narbonensis. It was the second most important Roman port in the western Mediterranean and the town was one of the most important commercial hubs between the colonies and the Roman Empire, thus the town could boast a size rivaling that of the city that had established it: Rome itself. Paradoxically, the town that distinguished itself for its impressive architecture, today shows no more signs of it: neither temples, arenas, nor theaters. Far less significant Roman towns like Nîmes or Arles are full of ancient sites. Narbonne today is a tranquil town in Occitania
Amidst a mostly Catholic community, a small tiny Anglican church offers more to the community of Placentia than people may think, and holds many connections and history to the rest of the world.
On 20 October 1973, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II. From conception to completion, it had taken more than 15 years and over $100 million dollars. In the years since its completion, the Sydney Opera House has become one of the most identifiable of Australia’s icons - ranking with the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Uluru, the koala and kangaroo - and is considered by many to be among the world's great architectural masterpieces.
Celebrating the splendor and grandeur of the great cinemas of the United States, built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts. A tribute to America’s great art form and the great monuments created for audiences to enjoy them in.
Based on the latest technological and scientific advances, this documentary explores the palace's architectural past to resurrect Louis XIV's vanished Versailles. Versailles was an ongoing building site at the time of Louis XIV and continued to be transformed by its successive occupants later on. The Versailles we know today only vaguely resembles the Versailles of the Sun King. Most of its original features and apartments no longer exist. Thanks to the digitisation of thousands of plans, a team of scientists takes us back in time to explore this forgotten past in a new way, through a large-scale reconstruction project to bring back the Versailles of Louis XIV as he designed it, according to his requirements and dreams.
Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.
The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.
For the first time in history, women are designing our world. They are the rising stars in architecture-previously an all-male galaxy--and they are literally and figuratively changing the landscape. MAKING SPACE captures the compelling stories and outstanding designs of Annabelle Selldorf (NY), Farshid Moussavi (London), Odile Decq (Paris), Marianne McKenna (Toronto), and Kathryn Gustafson (Seattle & London). Without script or narration, each woman tells her own story, enhanced by the insights of commentators including Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger; MoMA's Peter Reed and Paola Antonelli; and others. Meryl Streep makes a special guest appearance.
Frederick Law Olmsted designed New York City's Central Park with Calvert Vaux over 150 years ago, and it remains an undisputed haven of tranquility amidst one of the largest, tallest, and most unnatural places on earth. This film examines the creation of America's great city parks in the late 1800s through the enigmatic eyes of Frederick Law Olmsted, visionary urban planner and landscape architect. In his own words, Olmsted and America's Urban Parks weaves together Olmsted's engaging and poignant personal story with those of the lasting masterpieces he left for us today, featuring Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Kline as the voice of Frederick Law Olmsted.
A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and patients who recount their memories of the behemoth facility while also exploring the abandoned building as it is today.
"Chair Times" charts a course through an ocean of chairs. In the focus are 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum. Arranged according to their year of production, they illustrate development from 1807 to the very latest designs straight off the 3D printer, forming a timeline to modern seating design. The film features many people whose vocations involve design and who are experts in the field, such as designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director Emeritus of MAK Vienna/Los Angeles Peter Noever, Mateo Kries, Director of the Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum curators Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit. And your guide through the history of chairs is Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra.
For centuries, the Great Pyramids have fascinated Mankind. Patrice Pooyard's The Revelation Of The Pyramids reveals what lies behind the greatest of archaeological mysteries: a message of paramount importance for humanity. From China to Peru, from Egypt to Mexico, through the world's most enigmatic and most beautiful sites, the director has spent 6 years meeting eminent scientific specialists and verifying his discoveries. The result will shake the teaching of history to its very core, and revolutionize Egyptology entirely. A great odyssey along a breathtaking route climaxes in a revelation as unexpected as it is staggering.
Ava, an award-winning chef at a big-city restaurant, has lost her spark. Her boss sends her out to find herself to save her menu and her job. She returns home and finds little to inspire her, but when she reunites with her childhood friend Logan, Ava has to get her head out of the clouds and her foot out of her mouth to rediscover her passion for food.
Part one of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York and Atlanta. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley.
Tom drowns in a lake and sinks to the bottom. There, he finds a mermouse, which he tries to capture and eat.
Lethal Injection is a very well-researched film with definitive proof that vaccines are being stealthily used to force sterilize the masses, as part of the New World Order’s “fertility management.” Vaccines don’t work! Countless statistics show that time and time again vaccinated people contract the very disease they were supposedly inoculated against – sometimes from the very vaccine itself. With side effects including autism, paralysis, cancer and death, some vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue. As former director of the National Institute of Health director James Shannon said, “The only safe vaccine is a vaccine that’s never used.
As nuclear war looms, a woman must make a final phone call.
One day the snow left the forest and went to the city. At the same time, his leadership was the Snow Law, which says that if you fall out for the first time, you can get up and walk again, if you fall out a second time, you can also get up and go further. And if you fall out for the third time, then you will remain lying until you turn into a puddle.
The wind blows almost permanently on the craggy coast of Northern Spain. While the legendary storm blusters, old villagers play cards and discuss the history of the scandalous relationship between Pepet Tremolls and the much younger Rosa Campos Del Amor, in the days of Franco's dictatorship. Tremolls was found dead on Christmas Eve. Suicide, people said. Or was it Rosa's resentful lover? 'The best distance to a beautiful young woman is the biggest one', the coroner concludes who examined Tremolls' body at the time. The gentlemen try to find out how the two lovers got to know each other and how intense the stormy relationship must have been. Jumping back and forth in time, the relationship and its players are expounded, alternated with images of the tranquil village, the wild nature and the wind that sweeps through the trees and stirs up dust on country roads.
This is a movie built from impericia, from misunderstanding, from surprise and mutual amazement; it is a film that reflects on the idea of community, the relationship of mankind with the environment in which nature, beasts and human beings depend on each other to continue inhabiting a barren land.
An enchanting tale of childhood in a sleepy Cotswold village during and immediately after the First World War.
March 1999: Mikiya Kokutou meets Shiki Ryougi again at the same place where he met her for the first time four years ago...
Though our world is full of sound, we only notice the noise. Sound can thrill, delight, warn, and scare us. But there's much more to the story. Sound can cure the sick and make the blind see.
Continuously modulating between animations with long exposures and snapshots enlarged across many film frames, #5 explores the relationship between image and time on the film strip. The images were made using very non-virtual, simple reflecting materials and can be regarded as action painting with light.
The gang decides to go camping with a little bear hunting on the side. A pair of poachers decides to try and scare them off with a gorilla suit but the gang decides to try and capture the gorilla instead.
Exploring the edits to receive an R rating from the MPAA.
Oleg is forty. Larissa is over thirty. Twenty years he lived with his wife Tatiana, who knows from childhood (studied in the same class), he has a twelve-year-old daughter nick. Established way of life. Good job. The emptiness in my soul — from the dashed hopes. And to top it all — she, Larissa. Very welcome, but from the point of view of sound logic — it is made unnecessary. The affair lasts for a year. They love each other as passionately as it happens only in his youth. But his wife finds out about their affair. Learns and daughter. The girl really wants to help her mother. And to eliminate razluchnitsa of the lives of their families. But it comes out differently…
Mang-wol, a master of martial arts, has doubts about the life he has led. Taking Yong, the son of Pak who he had nearly killed in a fight, Mang-wol disappears. As time passes, Mang-wol teaches Yong martial arts. Yong becomes an adult. He goes into the city to get medicine for Mang-wol. Yong runs into Nan-si, a woman of the Shaolin training hall, who takes all his gold. Yong is unable to defeat Paeng's fighting skills but Mang-wol saves him from his predicament. Paeng knows that Mang-wol is the enemy who killed Yong's father. Paeng searches out Mang-wol. Yong deceives Mang-wol and goes to see Nan-si. Yong becomes the manager of the Shaolin Hall but Paeng cruelly beats him up and Yong returns to Mang-wol. Mang-wol tells Yong the truth about his past and dies in a fight with Paeng. Yong practices the new fighting technique he's developed and fights Paeng.