Secrets of the Andean Temples: On the Trail of Viracocha (2017)

The Hermits

In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo

In Buffalo, N.Y., some of the greatest works of American architecture relay a remarkable story that resonates with the universal themes of home, family and friendship. The charismatic Frank Lloyd Wright, destined to become America’s greatest architect, called Darwin Martin, an unassuming, wealthy businessman from Buffalo, his “best friend.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo reveals how Martin’s three decades of support fostered Wright’s career and led to some of the architect’s renowned masterpieces—the Larkin Administration Building, the Darwin Martin Estates and the Martin summer home, Graycliff—all in Buffalo, New York.

Bauhaus 100

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

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.

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.

The Mystery of the Rascar Capac Mummy

Rascar Capac, the sinister creature featured on Hergé's album The Seven Crystal Balls (1948), has left its mark on many generations of readers. To draw it, the Belgian cartoonist was probably inspired by a mummy exhibited in the first pre-Columbian exhibition organized by the Brussels Cinquantenaire Museum in 1923. Two intrepid archaeologists embark on a fascinating journey to reconstruct the story of the mysterious mummy.

Soviet Bus Stops

“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.

Mamani in El Alto

His buildings are garish, colorful and completely overloaded. Columns and glittering chandeliers everywhere, and way too much of everything. The Bolivian civil engineer and architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre (*1971) builds houses in El Alto for a nouveau riche upper class of the Aymara, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Bolivia.

In Between Mountains and Oceans

Finding their place between the forest and the sea, the Japanese have always felt awe and gratitude toward Nature. Since ancient times, they have negotiated their own unique relationship with their natural surroundings. Acclaimed photographer Masa-aki Miyazawa discovered the essence of that ancient way of living in Ise Jingu, Japan’s holiest Shinto shrine. Inspired by the idea of sending a message to the future in the same way this ancient shrine keeps alive the traditions of the past, Miyazawa used an ultra-high resolution 4K camera to create a breathtaking visual journey linking the Ise forest with other forests throughout Japan.

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.

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.

Eiffel's Race to the Top

Behind the iconic Eiffel Tower lies the story of an incredible challenge to erect a thousand-foot tower that went far beyond a design competition, and marked a major turning point in engineering history. It was the beginning of radical transformation where iron was pitted against stone, engineering against architecture, and modern design against ancients. Press campaigns, lobbying, public conferences, denigration of opposing projects, bragging about big names - all participants engaged in a fierce battle without concession. Using 3D recreations, official sources (reports, letters, drawings...) and intimate archives obtained from their descendants, this film will bring to life this vertical race through a fresh and visual way to mark the centenary of Eiffel death.

The Builders of the Alhambra

Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.

Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace

Celebrating the splendor and grandeur of the great cinemas of the United States, built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts. A tribute to America’s great art form and the great monuments created for audiences to enjoy them in.

The Architecture of Doom

Featuring never-before-seen film footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, The Architecture of Doom captures the inner workings of the Third Reich and illuminates the Nazi aesthetic in art, architecture and popular culture. From Nazi party rallies to the final days inside Hitler's bunker, this sensational film shows how Adolf Hitler rose from being a failed artist to creating a world of ponderous kitsch and horrifying terror. Hitler worshipped ancient Rome and Greece, and dreamed of a new Golden Age of classical art and monumental architecture, populated by beautiful, patriotic Aryans. Degenerated artists and inferior races had no place in his lurid fantasy. As this riveting film shows, the Nazis went from banning the art of modernists like Picasso to forced euthanasia of the retarded and sick, and finally to the persecution of homosexuals and the extermination of the Jews.

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.

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.

Architecton

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

The Hedge Theater

Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage contrasts the sensuous softness of winter light with the lush green growth brought by spring rains. Each shot and each source of sound is steeped in meaning and placed within the film’s structure with exacting skill to build a poetic relationship between image and sound.

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.

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.

Lost Temple of The Inca

In the mountains of Peru, an environmental scientist discovers ancient artifacts submerged beneath the headwaters of the Amazon; his findings could save this sacred landscape from mining devastation.

Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm

"What we were trying to do was the ultimate form of architecture, which was predicting how society would use space, land and time." Curtis Schreier, ANT FARM Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm is the first film to consider the work of the renegade 1970s art/architecture collective Ant Farm, best known for its iconic land-art piece Cadillac Ranch. Radical architects, video pioneers, and mordantly funny cultural commentators, the Ant Farmers created a body of deeply subversive multidisciplinary work that questioned the boundaries of architecture and everything else in the process. Incorporating breathtaking archival video, new footage shot over ten years and animation based on zany period sketches, this film is about the joy of creation in a time when there were no limits. —Beth Federici

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.

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.

Machu Picchu Decoded

Deep in the Andean mountains lays a mysterious ruin named Machu Picchu. For 400 years it sat abandoned on its misty cliff, the quintessential lost city in the jungle. Rediscovered in 1911, it contained no written records or carvings, nothing that could shed light on its history. For a century since, it has defied the endless scores of visitors and scientists who attempted to understand its purpose. Who were the mysterious people who built it and why did they build it here? Today an international team of archeologists, engineers and scientists are finally piecing together the clues. Together they are discovering astonishing new burials, revealing the intricacies of its ingenious engineering and finally decoding the secrets of Machu Picchu.

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.

The Real Thing

A smaller scale Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysées can be found just outside Shanghai; a copy of St. Peter’s in Rome can be found in Yamoussoukro, in the Ivory Coast: a journey over three continents to see the architecture of imitation, the uncanny world of the fake.

Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story

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.

Palladio: The Power Of Architecture

Three restoration students and scholars from all over the world meet in a Palladian villa in view of a conference on Palladio. Meanwhile, in the United States of America, a young university professor asks his mentors, Kenneth Frampton and Peter Eisenman, how to be able to transmit Palladio's humanistic values to the new generations.

Fernand Pouillon, Une architecture habitée

In this documentary, Marie-Claire Rubinstein reveals to us, through the testimonies of the inhabitants who live there, the architectural achievements of the French urban planner Fernand Pouillon in Algiers. In particular the vast complexes of hundreds of social housing units, including the most famous Diar E Saâd (1953), Diar El Mahçoul (1954) and Climat de France (1957). The historical context, during the war of independence is related by the historian Benjamin Stora and Nadir Boumaza. This documentary also evokes the personality of Fernand Pouillon in a post-colonial context.

Petra: Secrets of the Ancient Builders

In the heart of the Jordanian desert, the ancient city of Petra is full of mysteries. How was this architectural wonder created over 2,000 years ago? The technical prowess of Petra, an ancient city in southern Jordan, which was a wonder in the middle of the desert.

Palace for the People

The life and death of socialist architectural monsters. An epic fairy-tale in five chapters.

Tokyo Ride

Revisiting the genre of the road movie in a very diaristic and personal way, the film takes us on board architect Ryue Nishizawa’s vintage Alfa Romeo (Giulia) for a day long wandering in the streets of Tokyo.

Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs

Southern California’s Coachella Valley, including the communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, boasts hundreds of extraordinary midcentury modern homes, public buildings and commercial structures. Modern designers such as William F. Cody, Albert Frey, William Krisel, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Donald Wexler, E. Stewart Williams left their collective mark on this desert paradise. Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs traces the history of modern architecture in Palm Springs from the first bold forays into modernist design to the preservation challenges facing the region today. Director Jake Gorst’s film features rare archival images and footage as well as interviews with historians, homeowners and the architects who helped create this mecca of modernism.

Vilanova Artigas: The Architect and the Light

The documentary rebuilds the life of the Brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas. His relatives, friends, students and six of his major works tell the history of this iconic Latin-American modernist.

Last Days of the Maya

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St. Peter's and the Papal Basilicas of Rome 3D

The unveiled treasures in the year of the Extraordinary Jubilee. The Papal Basilicas of Rome seen as never before: St. Peter's, St. John in the Lateran, St Mary Major, St Paul Outside the Walls and the works of art enshrined within them. A film tour shot from previously unseen points of view with the latest-generation 3D and 4K technology.

Drafting: Occupations & Opportunities

Treats drafting as a means of visual communication and a key to organized training and planning. Discusses the importance of drafting in various fields such as architecture, engineering, and industry. Drafting allows individuals to communicate their ideas visually, leading to accurate planning and construction. It is emphasized that drafting skills open up numerous career opportunities in different industries.

SAGRADA: El misteri de la creació

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia has been continuously under construction since 1882.

The Power of Utopia: Living with Le Corbusier in Chandigarh

With the construction of the Indian planned city of Chandigarh, the Swiss and French architect Le Corbusier completed his life's work 70 years ago. Chandigarh is a controversial synthesis of the arts, a bold utopia of modernity. The film accompanies four cultural workers who live in the planned city and reflects on Le Corbusier's legacy, utopian urban ideas and the cultural differences between East and West in an atmospherically dense narrative.

Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

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.

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

The Gaudi Code

La Sagrada Familia – although still under construction in Barcelona – is a cathedral without any flaws. Almost 100 years after his death, experts are convinced that Gaudi was a mathematical genius and that each embellishing ornament of the Sagrada Familia actually serves an architectural purpose.