New Towns for Old (1942)

The Bubble

Diving deep into the true causes of the Great Recession, the financial crisis of the 2010s, renowned economists, investors and business leaders explain what America is facing if we don't learn from our past mistakes. Is the economy really improving or are we just blowing up another Bubble?

Hoop Dreams

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America

The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America chronicles for the first time the complete story of this great American symbol… from Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and St. Louis’ role in westward expansion; to the eventual construction of the largest stainless steel structure in history.

Big Time

Big Time gets up close with Danish architectural prodigy Bjarke Ingels over a period of six years while he is struggling to complete his largest projects yet, the Manhattan skyscraper W57 and Two World Trade Center.

Empire City

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

The Great North

Beginning at the industrial revolution of the ‘great north’, Jenn Nkiru draws lines between peoples, cities, countries, buildings, movements, bodies and spaces(s) using a mixture of archive materials and new footage. There is little stillness as we are pushed and pulled through Black histories and communities across the city of Manchester and beyond. Nkiru has termed this filmmaking process “cosmic archeology”, and it is grounded in Afro-surrealism, experimental film and the Black arts movement.

in retrospect

Immigrant workers build a shopping mall for the upcoming 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 2016, nine people with migrant backgrounds are killed in a racist attack at the same mall.

Bus 174

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

Noble and Mundane Prague

A documentary film comparing current / everyday and historical / noble aspects of Prague.

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.

Marqueetown

Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.

RapLine

Between 1990 and 1993, at a time when rap was not yet on the radio in France, Olivier Cachin hosted a musical TV show on M6 called "RapLine". The show exclusively devoted to rap and other alternative music. This cult show presented all the facets of these emerging movements through interviews, lives and clips made especially for the show, around fifty clips were produced by RapLine. Another sequence of the show consisted of broadcasting new US rap clips subtitled in French.

Louis Kahn's Tiger City

Art historian and filmmaker Sundaram Tagore travels in the footsteps of Louis Kahn to discover how the famed American architect built a daringly modern and monumental parliamentary complex in war-torn Bangladesh.

The Orchards

In 2015, in Damascus, the Basateen al-Razi district and its orchards were razed to the ground as punishment for the population's uprising against the regime. Having lost everything, two former residents recall their neighborhood.

Folkhemmets Estetik

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

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”.

Ztracený architekt Ernst Wiesner

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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.

The End Of The Line: Rochester's Subway

"The End of the Line - Rochester's Subway" tells the little-known story of the rail line that operated in a former section of the Erie Canal from 1927 until its abandonment in 1956. Produced in 1994 by filmmakers Fredrick Armstrong and James P. Harte, the forty-five minute documentary recounts the tale of an American city's bumpy ride through the Twentieth Century, from the perspective of a little engine that could, but didn't. The film has since been rereleased (2005) and now contains the main feature with special portions that were added as part of the rereleased version. These include a look at the only surviving subway car from the lines and a Phantom tun through the tunnels in their abandoned state, among others, for a total of 90 minutes of unique and well preserved historical information.

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.

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.

Île de la Réunion - L'incroyable route qui défie l'Océan

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Space and Light

An award-winning wordless documentary that explores the architecture of the then new St. Peter's Seminary which is now seen as one of the most important post-war buildings in the United Kingdom. The film was made in celebration after architect Jack Coia was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1969. Winner of the Medalla de Bronce at the Fifth Union of International Architects Festival in Madrid (1975).

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.

Isle of Flowers

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.

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.