Father of the City

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

A docu-art film about Kyiv and the contemporary problems of the capital. The film raises the issue of the dilapidated state of Kyiv's old buildings and the search for effective mechanisms to preserve the city's architectural heritage.

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

Nadja is a guest student, who stays at Cité Universitaire and visits the Sorbonne, while preparing a thesis on Proust; she also likes to stroll about Paris.

A short documentary about urban planning and the harmonisation of old and new building elements in Jerusalem of the 1970's, led by the architect Moshe Safdie.

"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."

Jugaad is a Hindi word that can be translated as "innovative or effective solution that bends the rules". It refers to the extreme capacity developed by Mumbai's inhabitants to adapt and get around any type of constraint or obstacle posed by the city's urban structure. In a relatively small piece of land where 21 million people live today, the inhabitants of Mumbai demonstrate great creativity when it comes to managing the spaces (for sale, for prayer, for traffic) and the flows that cross them every day. Without using language, Hong Kong artist Chak Hin Leung brings together in this video a dozen unique situations in which people, animals, vehicles and natural elements intermingle and brush up against each other, without ever colliding.

This feature documentary takes a look at how the Halifax/Dartmouth community in Nova Scotia was stimulated by a week-long session held by a panel of specialists from different fields who met with members of this urban community to consider the future of the area and the responsibility of the citizens and government in planning the future.

Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City reveals the fascinating life and complex legacy of architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham. In the midst of the late nineteenth century urban disorder, Burnham offered a powerful vision of what a civilized American city could look like, one that provided a compelling framework for Americans to make sense of the world around them. A timely, intriguing story in the American experience, Make No Little Plans explores Burnham's impact on the development of the American city as debate continues today about what urban planning means in a democratic society.

Amina, Sami and Jennyfer are high school students in the Paris suburbs, in 93. At the initiative of 3 of their teachers, they embark on an unexpected investigation into a gigantic leisure park project which involves concreting agricultural land near their homes. But can we have the power to act on a territory when we are 17 years old? Funny and intrepid, these new citizens take us to meet residents of their neighborhood, property developers, farmers and even elected officials of the National Assembly. A joyful quest that challenges conventional wisdom and revives our connection to the land!

Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.

In the very core of Salt Lake City, two special downtown blocks serve as a mirror. Just a handful of acres of land hold more than 150 years of the Utah story. On planners' maps, they're known as Salt Lake City Blocks 75 and 76. But to generations who have worked, lived, and played along their streets, Blocks 75 and 76 are a world unto themselves.

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

A City Runs Through the Festival is an anatomy of the Festival through the eyes of its own audience.

Devastating hurricanes, torrential rains, the inexorably rising waters: coastal megacities are now up against the wall. The filmmakers have chosen three emblematic cities: New York, Singapore and Rotterdam. Cities that each face unique problems and must revisit their relationship with water in order to survive on the long run. In 50 years, all surge barriers in the world will be out of order. What solutions will then remain for coastal cities?

Babylone, la cité des merveilles

The working-class Tuindorp Nieuwendam neighborhood in Amsterdam-Noord is like a village within the city. Many natives of the Northern Netherlands still live in the characteristically built houses, a unique variation on the Amsterdam School. With humor and Amsterdam directness, they share their stories about what's happening in their lives and in the neighborhood. Recently, a new generation of residents has also discovered the Noord district. How do residents view these changes and the neighborhood's transformation? Was everything better in the past, or are new connections emerging between residents, old and new?

Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus was supposed to unite sculpture, painting, design and architecture into a single combined constructive discipline. It is a synthesis of liberated imagination and stringent structure; cross-medial concepts that embellish and enrich our existence, illumination and clarity, order and playfulness. But Bauhaus was never just an artistic experiment. Confronted with the social conditions of that particular time, as well as the experience of WWI, the movement concerned itself with the political and social connotations of design from the very outset. Hence, Bauhaus history is not just the history of art, but also the history of an era that stretches from the early 20th century to the modern day.

A documentary on the post-war redevelopment in the City of London — focusing on the attempt to build an ambitious network of elevated walkways through the city. Featuring interviews with professor of town planning Michael Hebbert (UCL), architecture critic Jonathan Glancey, city planning officer Peter Wynne Rees and writer Nicholas Rudd-Jones (Pathways), the film explores why the 'Pedway' scheme was unsuccessful and captures the abandoned remains that, unknown to the public, still haunt the square mile.

Targeted for several failed redevelopment plans dating back to the days of Robert Moses, Willets Point, a gritty area in New York City known as the “Iron Triangle,” is the home of hundreds of immigrant-run, auto repair shops that thrive despite a lack of municipal infrastructure support. During the last year of the Bloomberg Administration, NYC’s government advanced plans for a “dynamic” high-end entertainment district that would completely wipe out this historic industrial core. The year is 2013, and the workers of Willets Point are racing against the clock to forestall their impending eviction. Their story launches an investigation into New York City’s history as the front line of deindustrialization, urban renewal, and gentrification.