The testimony of an artist who continues to believe in the socialist ideal. The story of a man who loves women.
Poème Électronique is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress. The pavilion was shaped like a stomach, with a narrow entrance and exit on either side of a large central space. As the audience entered and exited the pavilion, the electronic composition Concret PH by Iannis Xenakis (who also acted as Le Corbusier's architectural assistant for the pavilion's design) was heard. Poème électronique was synchronized to a film of black and white photographs selected by Le Corbusier which touched on vague themes of human existence.
A humorous observation in Barcelona’s immigrant neighbourhood El Raval. Four barber shops, four places of remembrance, strange time and space capsules inhabited by people who left their home to find a better one, while the Spaniards are about to leave their own country themselves.
Portrait of the Italian sculptor Donatello (1386-1466), a precursor of the High Renaissance who considerably influenced sculptural art with his innovative way of conceiving space. Donatello is already a legend in his own lifetime. The sculptor is the forefather of the High Renaissance and pioneer for artists such as Raphael or Michelangelo. His bronze sculpture of the "David" or the "Pazzi Madonna" in marble are icons of art history and testify to his sculptural power of renewal.
One week in the extraordinary-ordinary life of Mr. Moriyama, a Japanese art, architecture and music enlighted amateur who lives in one of the most famous contemporary Japanese architecture, the Moriyama house, built in Tokyo in 2005 by Pritzker-prize winner Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). Introduced in the intimacy of this experimental microcosm which redefines completely the common sense of domestic life, Ila Bêka recounts in a very spontaneous and personal way the unique personality of the owner: a urban hermit living in a small archipelago of peace and contemplation in the heart of Tokyo. From noise music to experimental movies, the film let us enter into the ramification of the Mr. Moriyama's free spirit. Moriyama-San, the first film about noise music, acrobatic reading, silent movies, fireworks and Japanese architecture!
A documentary about the painter Petar Meseldžija.
“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.
Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV architects, always has 100 projects going at once. Documentary filmmaker Jan Louter followed him for two years to make "Under Tomorrow's Sky", a candid and open-hearted look at the highs and lows of the architecture profession.
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)
Tarology follows Enrique through the streets of New York City as he shows us how to see the tarot - not superstitiously, but through the eyes of an artist - and how we are surrounded everyday by both the beauty and the symbolism of this ancient and often misunderstood tradition.
The Man Who Can't Get Enough of Architecture: Nişan Yaubyan
Notre-Dame Résurrection
Lutah explores the life of Lutah Maria Riggs, an forgotten architect who had a major impact on the development of Southern California.
When Australian artist Eolo Bottaro revives the lost Triform Goddess Isis, Polizzi's forgotten history revives. This gripping documentary captures the statue's creation, the town's awe, and the artist's unexpected bond with the Sicilian town.
Bílá Telč
Charles Vandenhove, architecte de l'art
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.
The history of Bruguera, the most important comic publisher in Spain between the 1940s and the 1980s. How the characters created by great writers and pencilers became Spanish archetypes and how their strips persist nowadays as a portrait of Spain and its people. The daily life of the creators and the founding family, the Brugueras. The world in which hundreds of vivid colorful paper beings lived and still live, in the memory of millions, in the smile of everyone.
Nishinoyama House by Kazuyo Sejima
Death and the devil, nudity and eroticism, horror in blazing colours, Gothic art cast a spell over people 500 years ago. In these image-poor times, art deliberately and skilfully played with the emotions of the viewer, triggering fear, devotion, but also rapture. Art documentary on German gothic art of the late-middle ages.