Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs (2010)

(0) based on 0 votes
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.
Directors
Release Date
Jan 01, 2010
Runtime
00h 52m
Available in streaming on

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.

Movies like Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs

Ed Wood

The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.
Search similar movies
7.5
Ed+Wood
Riding Giants

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.
Search similar movies
7.6
Riding+Giants
Riding Giants

2004

Search similar movies
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Television made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. Television producer by day, CIA assassin by night, Chuck Barris was recruited by the CIA at the height of his TV career and trained to become a covert operative. Or so Barris said.
Search similar movies
6.7
Confessions+of+a+Dangerous+Mind
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

2002

Search similar movies
Hiroshima Mon Amour

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
Search similar movies
7.7
Hiroshima+Mon+Amour
Hiroshima Mon Amour

1959

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
5.5
Big+Time
Milk

The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
Search similar movies
7.2
Milk
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.
Search similar movies
8.0
Coast+Modern
Coast Modern

2012

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
9.0
Empire+City
Empire City

1985

Search similar movies
Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story

Exploring the rise and fall of the groundbreaking animated series ​Ren & Stimpy​ and its controversial creator, John Kricfalusi, through archival footage, show artwork and interviews with the artists, actors and executives behind the show.
Search similar movies
6.8
Happy+Happy+Joy+Joy%3A+The+Ren+%26+Stimpy+Story
Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story

2020

Search similar movies
The Go-Go's

As the first all-female band to play their instruments, write their songs and have a No. 1 album, The Go-Go’s made history. Underpinned by candid testimonies, this film chronicles the meteoric rise to fame of a band born in the LA punk scene who became a pop phenomenon.
Search similar movies
7.2
The+Go-Go%27s
The Go-Go's

2021

Search similar movies
Rebuilding Paradise

​On November 8, 2018, a spark flew in the Sierra Nevada foothills, igniting the most destructive wildfire in California history and decimating the town of Paradise. Unfolding during the year after the fire, this is the story of the Paradise community as they begin to rebuild their lives.
Search similar movies
6.1
Rebuilding+Paradise
Rebuilding Paradise

2020

Search similar movies
Arne Jacobsen’s Modern Denmark

Danish documentary about the disobedient schoolboy with a talent for painting, who became one of Denmark’s greatest architects. His ideas were ahead of their time and often received criticism, but today, 50 years after his death, Arne Jacobsen's schools, town halls and libraries are still with us, and they define modern Denmark.
Search similar movies
Arne+Jacobsen%E2%80%99s+Modern+Denmark
Arne Jacobsen’s Modern Denmark

2021

Search similar movies
Golden Door

The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
Search similar movies
6.5
Golden+Door
Golden Door

2006

Search similar movies
Wattstax

A documentary film about the Afro-American Woodstock concert held in Los Angeles seven years after the Watts riots. Director Mel Stuart mixes footage from the concert with footage of the living conditions in the current-day Watts neighborhood.
Search similar movies
7.0
Wattstax
Rize

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.
Search similar movies
6.7
Rize
When You're Strange

The creative chemistry of four brilliant artists —drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Kreiger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison— made The Doors one of America's most iconic and influential rock bands. Using footage shot between their formation in 1965 and Morrison's death in 1971, it follows the band from the corridors of UCLA's film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, to the stages of sold-out arenas.
Search similar movies
7.3
When+You%27re+Strange
When You're Strange

2010

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
7.2
Antonio+Gaud%C3%AD
Antonio Gaudí

1984

Search similar movies
All Creatures Welcome

All Creatures Welcome explores the world of hackers and nerds at the events of the Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest hacker association. The film dispels common clichés and draws a utopian picture of a possible society in the digital age.
Search similar movies
9.0
All+Creatures+Welcome
All Creatures Welcome

2018

Search similar movies
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film

Ric Burns unearths rarely seen footage and offers keen observations on the life and artistic influence of Andy Warhol. [Made for and aired on PBS's American Masters series.]
Search similar movies
8.2
Andy+Warhol%3A+A+Documentary+Film
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film

2006

Search similar movies
The Re-Up

A backstage and on-stage look at Nicki Minaj's career during the Pink Friday Tour, festivals, and more.
Search similar movies
The+Re-Up
Nel silenzio del parco

Plot unavailable
Search similar movies
Nel+silenzio+del+parco
Nel silenzio del parco

2025

Search similar movies
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?
Search similar movies
6.0
Architecton
Architecton

2024

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
7.1
Eames%3A+The+Architect+and+the+Painter
Eames: The Architect and the Painter

2011

Search similar movies
Heat Wave

A rookie black journalist investigates the tensions of the Watts section of Los Angeles in the bloody summer of 1965.
Search similar movies
6.2
Heat+Wave
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.
Search similar movies
Making+Dust
Making Dust

2023

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
6.4
The+Hedge+Theater
The Hedge Theater

2002

Search similar movies
No Further Instructions

The award winner Japanese architect Toyo Ito designed the International Baroque Museum in Puebla, Mexico. He is well known for his majestic buildings in Europe and Asia that rise with nature inspired geometry and complex shapes that could belong in a fantasy. Nobody knew how to build this project until a team of Mexican constructors accepted the challenge after two years of nobody stepping up to it. But there was a catch. They only had 27 weeks to build something comparable to the Guggenheim in NYC. This is the story of that team who tested the Mexican genius to solve a complex puzzle told by the men and women who made it. On time. On a budget. Against all odds.
Search similar movies
6.0
No+Further+Instructions
No Further Instructions

2016

Search similar movies
The T.A.M.I. Show

Hailed by one music reviewer as "the grooviest, wildest, slickest hit ever to pound the screen," "The T.A.M.I. Show" is an unrelenting rock spectacular starring some of the greatest pop performers of the 60s. These top recording idols – representing the musical moods of London, Liverpool, Hollywood and Detroit – packed the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with 2,600 screaming fans and virtually brought down the house. This is the cinematic record of that electrifying event.
Search similar movies
8.0
The+T.A.M.I.+Show
The T.A.M.I. Show

1964

Search similar movies
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.
Search similar movies
8.3
Chair+Times
Chair Times

2019

Search similar movies