When Brazil Was Modern (2025)

The Lie Detector

In the first decades of the 20th century, when life was being transformed by scientific innovations, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine. Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations routinely tested employees’ honesty and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.” But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector too often became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. Written and directed by Rob Rapley and executive produced by Cameo George, The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.

Folkhemmets Estetik

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

Tudo é Projeto

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.

Paname: The Ghost of the Great Frenchman

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”.

Bamboo Theatre

This film is a portrait of unique cultural space for Spirits, Gods and People. While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cities, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century - Bamboo Theatre.

Coast Modern

A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.

Safety123

The Alps are covered by a nearly invisible security system that’s supposed to protect humans from natural disasters. This film attentively follows the sometimes mysterious-looking activities and preparations to portray the human struggle against the forces of nature.

Tadao Ando

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.

Benny och kulturhuset

A portrait of Benny Fredriksson who for 16 years was CEO of Kulturhuset / Stadsteatern. He also had a background as an actor and director. In connection with a media hunt he resigned and later took his own life.

Les Trésors du Paris haussmannien

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Towards the South, A journey around earthen architecture and André Ravéreau

Across two countries, France and Algeria, and five cities, Mohamed Gholam takes us south to tell us about the earthen and vernacular-inspired architecture of André Ravéreau. Passing through Lyon, Marseille, Algiers, and Djelfa, this adventure will take us to Ghardaïa, in the Algerian desert. The documentary presents the following buildings: L'Orangerie in Lyon, the Village Terre de l'Isle-d'Abeau in Villefontaine, the Unité d'Habitat or Cité Radieuse in Marseille, L'Aérohabitat in Algiers, the Palais des Raïs or Bastion 23 in Algiers, the Hôtel des Postes in Ghardaïa, and the low-cost housing of Sidi Abbaz de Bounoura.

Antonio Gaudí

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926) designed some of the world's most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject's organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.

Secrets of the Andean Temples: On the Trail of Viracocha

Thousands of years before the Inca, a megalithic civilization was founded at Lake Titicaca which spread 500 miles to Cuzco, following a global flood that destroyed the Earth in 9000 BC. Its architects — Viracocha and his seven Shining Ones — disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared, yet the legacy of temples they left behind still baffles the modern mind. Filmed at Tiwanaku, Puma Punku, Cuzco, Quenqo, Saqsayhuaman, Amuru Machay, Quillarumiyoc, Pisac, Tombomachay, Huayna Picchu, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, Cutimbo, Silustani and Amaru Meru.

Aalto

Aalto is one of the greatest names in modern architecture and design, Aino and Alvar Aalto gave their signature to iconic Scandic design. The first cinematic portrait of their life love story is an enchanting journey of their creations and influence around the world.

Making Dust

Making Dust is an essay film, a portrait of the demolition of Ireland's second largest Catholic Church, the Church of the Annunciation in Finglas West, Dublin. Understanding this moment as a 'rupture', the film maps an essay by architectural historian Ellen Rowley on to documentation of the building's dismantling. Featuring oral interviews recorded at the site of the demolition and in a nearby hairdressers, the film invites viewers to pause and reflect on this ending alongside the community of the building. The film is informed by Ultimology, and invites its audience to think about the life cycles of buildings and materials, how we mourn, what is sacred, how we gather, what we value and issues of sustainability in architecture.

The Hedge Theater

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.

Higher and Higher

A documentary on man's desire and quest to build ever taller and more advanced structures.

Great Expectations: A Journey Through the History of Visionary Architecture

This documentary provides an astonishing journey through innovative, futuristic, utopian and sometimes bizarre architecture projects—including concrete illusions of grandeur and Lego-like modular apartments to an Instant City Airship and round, grass-covered subterranean dwellings—from the beginning of the 20th century to today.

Kochuu

A film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition and its impact on the Nordic building-tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future, traditions, nature, concrete, gardens and high-tech, KOCHUU tells us how contemporary Japanese architects strive to unite the ways of modern man with the old philosophies in astounding constructions. Interviews with, and works by, Japanese architects Tadad Ando, Kisho Kurokawa, Toyo Ito and Kazuo Shinohara and Scandinavian architects Sverre Fehn, Kristian Gullichsen and Juhani Pallasmaa.

Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City

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.

André Ravéreau and Algeria

The architect André Ravéreau spent a large part of his life in Algeria, he is today an essential reference for Algerian builders of several generations. His daughter Maya, an architect herself, accompanies us to the places of his creations and his research, in the Mzab first where he lived, created, trained other architects in the "desert workshop" and had the oases of the Mzab classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inspired by tradition to better innovate as in the construction of the Ghardaïa post office, or in that of a very surprising villa... Then in Algiers where he worked to preserve the ancestral heritage of the Casbah, faithfully describing the principles of his construction in line with current concerns, such as the choice of environmentally friendly materials and avoiding energy waste, as testified by the architect Yasmine Terki, a great specialist in earth materials.

Sauver Notre-Dame

In the aftermath of the fire that struck Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, the cathedral is in danger of collapsing. A race against time begins for a hundred men and women who will face danger, the unknown, and toxic lead dust for a year to save this world heritage site. Architects, stonemasons, carpenters, crane operators, scaffolders, rope access technicians, archaeologists: this unique project brings together rare skills. With rare enthusiasm and cohesion, they will achieve numerous technical and human feats. This film recounts the spectacular and moving adventure of these builders fighting to save Notre Dame.

Bauhaus Spirit: 100 Years of Bauhaus

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.

Matisse & Lydia

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Bacon-Freud, face à face

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Bowlingtreff

The “Bowlingtreff” is a bowling alley situated right in the centre of Leipzig opened in July 1987. At that time the quality of life in Leipzig and the whole GDR got worse. Houses collapsed because of poor conditions, public life and amusement was on a very low level. The “Bowlingtreff” was not merely an urban entertainment centre but a revolution in those days. Built with the help of hundreds of volunteers without permission of the state authorities in Berlin the building expresses a free and international architecture known as postmodernism. It is an architecture that was never seen before in Leipzig. Marble and parquet on the floor, a glass roof and beautiful pink pillars. The atmosphere was western as time witnesses remember it.

Aufstand im Bordell - Frauenhandel um 1900

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Roger D'Astous

A documentary about Montreal architect Roger D'astous, who battled all his life to create a Nordic architecture. A star architect in the 60s, and Frank Lloyd Wright student, he fell from grace before rising again at the dawn of the century.

Laurence Olivier: a life

A multi-award winning biography covering the life and career of legendary screen and stage actor/director Laurence Olivier.

INFRASTRATA

Amongst the contemplative static shots of decaying architecture weaves an abstract narrative unveiling the life-cycle of a higher perception, too large to perceive. Shot at various sites across south-east England, INFRASTRATA is a study on the concept of super-organisms, and the relationship between structure and nature.

Chair Times

"Chair Times" charts a course through an ocean of chairs. In the focus are 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum. Arranged according to their year of production, they illustrate development from 1807 to the very latest designs straight off the 3D printer, forming a timeline to modern seating design. The film features many people whose vocations involve design and who are experts in the field, such as designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director Emeritus of MAK Vienna/Los Angeles Peter Noever, Mateo Kries, Director of the Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum curators Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit. And your guide through the history of chairs is Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra.

Brooklyn Bridge

Today it's a symbol of strength and vitality. 135 years ago, it was a source of controversy. This documentary examines the great problems and ingenious solutions that marked the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. From conception to construction, it traces the bridge's transformation from a spectacular feat of heroic engineering to an honored symbol in American culture.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter

Interviews with the junior designers swept into the 24-7 world of "The Eamery" are the heart of this complex picture of a husband-and-wife creative team that define the era of Mid-Century Modernism. Narrated by James Franco, the film draws from a trove of archival material, primarily the stunning films and photographs produced in mind-boggling volume by Charles, Ray, and their staff during the hyper-creative forty years of the Eames Office.

Italia: Fire and Ashes

The epic and poetic tale of the early years of Italian cinema, from 1896 to 1930: how peplum was born, how the first stars shone, how many daring filmmakers were able to create an original style amalgamating literature, theater, painting and opera; a tale of splendor and decadence.