John Hejduk: Builder of Worlds

The testimony of an artist who continues to believe in the socialist ideal. The story of a man who loves women.

The fifth project of the Living Architectures series, Inside Piano is composed of three films on three symbolic buildings of Renzo Piano's career. A visit throughout the prototype-building of the Centre Pompidou. An immersion in the soundproof world of a submarine floating in the depths of the Parisian underground. A journey aboard a luminous magic carpet of a highly sophisticated architectural machine. A humorous, caustic and quirky point of view.

Visiting examples of Herzog and de Meurons ground-breaking style, this film reflects their capacity to astonish and explore the way in which they transform what might otherwise be ordinary through new treatments and techniques.

A short film about traditional crafts and culture that can still be found in the Wallachian mountains today.

In Search of Hy-Brasil contemplates the textures and rhythms of island life. It brings to the fore the symbiotic relationship that exists between islanders and their elemental surroundings, and how their existences are formed and shaped by raw materials.

A Stone Story

Documentary on the construction of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian Punjab region, planned by Albert Mayer and Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

Ekodomy aneb Život v rovnováze

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.

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.

Aspects of the city of Congonhas do Campo. The preponderance of baroque architecture, the Basilica of Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinho, the six chapels on the terrace leading to Morro do Maranhão. Each chapel contains statues representing moments of the Passion of Christ. While in the first chapel there is Santa Ceia figuration, in the second there is the Passo Horto scene. The kiss of betrayal and the imprisonment of Christ before the scene of the third chapel. In the fourth, two scenes are gathered: the coronation and the flagellation. On the fifth, the Christ bears the cross and the crucifixion is featured in the sixth chapel. The twelve apostles of Aleijadinho and the Latin inscriptions of each one. The interior of the Basilica and its main altar, with the figure of the Lord Dead.

Bílá Telč

One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive migration of people to cities. (Lynne Fernie, HotDocs)

Under Dorchester Square in Montreal lies the cemetery where 55,000 people were buried in the 19th century. The square is still at the heart of social conflicts in Quebec, 150 years later.

2005-2008. Video. In 2005 San Francisco real estate magnate Angelo Sangiacomo commissioned Strickland to make a movie that would chronicle final stages in the construction of his new house in Pebble Beach, CA. Amidst the spectacle of the building site, the videographer sought to portray a design project of operatic proportions that involved a sometimes dissonant cast of characters and took more than 6 years to unfold. The owners hoped that this video record might lend future visibility to a structure’s bones and soul that otherwise vanish from sight by the time building is completed.

Francesco Borromini, génie du baroque romain

Antonio Gaudi, portrait d'artiste

Gaudi, Le dernier bâtisseur

A look at contemporary Paris through the lens of theories and ideologies of the past two centuries, with a particular focus on the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier.

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.