La Ricerca della Forma

Kamenná sláva

Documentary about the life and work of the architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, told by him in prominence for Joana, his daughter. With more than 80 years of age, Paulo Mendes is today one of the most important and renowned architects in the world, but, above all, he is a thinker who has controversial ideas and opinions about urbanism, nature, humanity, art and technique deserve to be heard. In a constant dialogue between interviewee / father and interviewer / daughter, Joana is the guiding thread of the film. As in all personal relationships, especially between parents and children, the thread that leads is also that which is conducted.

The twelfth edition of the International Meeting of Collective Architectures was held in Palma de Mallorca, in the neighborhoods of La Soledat, Nou Llevant and Es Molinar, at the end of September 2019. The meeting focused on the imposition of false paradises and the description of the current mechanisms of urban transformation that expel people from their neighborhoods.

For the past two decades Didi Contractor has been passionately implementing her architectural visions in North West of India, the Kangra Valley, at the foot hills of the Himalayas combining rural traditions with modern requirements. This poetic documentary introduces us to her creations - houses built from clay, bamboo, slate and river stone, constructed in tribute to their natural surroundings. At the age of 86, Didi Contractor pursues her vision working day and night - dreaming her designs then designing her dreams. She sketches roughly, then proportions with pinpoint accuracy, the blueprints for economically and ecologically sustainability.

Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.

Ferdinand de Lesseps, known as “The Great Frenchman”, will embark in the greatest adventure of his life: To unite the Pacific and Atlantic oceans through a Canal in the Isthmus of Panama – without knowing that this will cost him his reputation, thousands of innocent lives and the biggest financial scandal of all time, up to that point: the famous “Scandal of Panama”. Today, the French capital is known as “Paname”.

Notre-Dame de la Garde: Basilique hors norme

Filmed in Rome in the 1980s, the work draws on Borromini’s Baroque architecture and Il Sassetta’s St. Martin and the Beggar. Beavers contrasts winter’s subdued light with the verdant growth of spring, constructing a precise montage in which image and sound form a poetic dialogue.

An examination of the Olivetti store in Venice, Piazza San Marco -- a true icon of Italian architecture of the twentieth century restored in the 1950s by Carlo Scarpa.

Mozambique 1974 - the European name of the capital Lourenço Marques was deleted and replaced by Maputo. Between the delicacy and the apocalyptic, Brisa Solar reveals the little secrets of an African city that was born from a modernist dream, which led a revolution and which today sees its cultural heritage and threatened by Chinese capitalism.

The Eames House and Studio is explored via a series of slides.

Famed Swiss architect and artist Robert Maillart was renowned for his concrete bridges; this documentary examines the elegant design of his engineering masterpieces, which, the film argues, embrace both functionality and aesthetics. Instead of following a traditional journalistic structure, director Heinz Emigholz's spellbinding film reads more like ethereal visual poetry, allowing the beauty of Maillart's work to speak for itself.

Egypt's only modernist architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) was committed to ecology and sustainability in his architecture. This film takes us with slow steps, in still images, to two villages he created. Fathy's historically grounded, forward-looking designs prompt us to reflect on the past as well as contemplate new solutions for the future.

Ztracený architekt Ernst Wiesner

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 cultural-historical portrait of the renowned and enigmatic architect Sigurd Lewerentz, who rarely allowed himself to be captured on film.

The Piccirilli family settled in New York City and started the largest and most prolific marble carving studio in America. For nearly 50 years, Piccirilli sculptors helped shape the architectural landscapes of Washington and New York through hundreds of monuments, memorials, and artworks, many of which are preserved in museums and private collections.

Images of crowd simulation are faced with testimonies from Liverpool Football Club’s supporters who recall their experience marked by a tragic event: the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, which changed the nature of the game of football.

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.

A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Japanese architect who employs Buddhist ideas and western modernism to achieve intercultural architecture.