Andres Kurg is an art historian who likes Danish modernist architecture and therefore wants to settle there. He argues with Danish officials to grant him a residence permit for aesthetic reasons.
Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.
Gossenreiter
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)
An old hostel, located in the center of Porto, served for many years as a hostel for people with few possessions, prostitutes and people passing through who made that place a more or less prolonged residence.
Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. Together with a few friends (among them famous Swiss actor Stefan Kurt), director Aron Nick's father and uncle shoot the idealistic Super 8 film "Dr Tscharniblues" ("The Tscharni Blues") – a wild, unvarnished self-portrait of their generation. 40 years later, Nick gathers the friends at Tscharnergut and asks what has happened to them and their ideals in the meantime. What have the achieved? What have they lost? Past, present, and future clash and form a journey of personal disappointments, hopes, and a collective search for identity. In "Tscharniblues II," Aron Nick discovers a kind of friendship that can weather anything.
This insightful documentary feature from PJ Letofsky serves as a profile of iconic Austrian-American Architect Richard Neutra, whose work and legacy have helped shape the modern understanding of design, architecture and the interconnected fabric of nature. Today, Richard's legacy lives on through his son, Dion, who has taken up his father's mantle after nearly three-decades under his mentorship.
Jaime Lerner - Uma História de Sonhos
What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.
Urban architecture as seen through the eyes of four female veterans in the field.
A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Nicknamed “Architect to the Stars,” African American architect Paul R. Williams had an incredible life. Orphaned at the age of four, Williams grew up to build mansions for movie stars and millionaires in Southern California. From the early 1920s until his retirement 50 years later, Williams was one of the most successful architects in the country. His clients included Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. His name is associated with icons like the Beverly Hills Hotel, the original MCA Headquarters Building and LAX Airport. But at the height of his career Paul Williams wasn’t always welcome in the restaurants and hotels he designed or the neighborhoods where he built homes, because of his race. “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story” tells the compelling, but little known story, of how he used talent and perseverance to beat the odds and create a body of work that can be found from coast to coast.
Before its economic decline, Detroit was a major metropolis. Now, in the 2000s, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. Johnny Knoxville tours the city to meet some of the people who are creating a new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity.
"Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture" focuses on the construction boom in the United States after World War II. Sometimes considered cold and unattractive, mid-century modern designs were a by-product of post-war optimism and reflected a nation's dedication to building a new future. This new architecture used modern materials such as reinforced concrete, glass and steel and was defined by clean lines, simple shapes and unornamented facades.
The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.
Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia
Produced by the Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, with the cooperation of the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy, and released by Warner Bros. for the War Activities Committee shortly after the surrender of Japan. Follow General Douglas MacArthur and his men from their exile from the Philippines in early 1942, through the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 1, 1945. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Castiglione d'Otranto, in the South of Italy. A group of thirty-year-olds no longer accept that the solution to the economic, ecological and political problems of the territory is always "to leave". They propose to the villagers who own pieces of uncultivated land, often felt as a burden, to put them in common. They decide to stay, to link their lives to the land and to invest in a value: being together. Castiglione becomes the village of restance. They cultivate ancient seeds and local biodiversity, they make decisions together, they develop a local economy. Accepting the shadows of the past, another potential of the place is rediscovered.
Rising sea levels and sinking land threaten to destroy Venice. Leading scientists and engineers battling the forces of nature to try to save this historic city for future generations. Discover the innovative projects and feats of engineering currently underway, including a hi-tech flood barrier, eco-projects to conserve the lagoon, and new efforts to investigate erosion beneath the city.