A 1996 Dutch documentary film about the Western European architects who were invited by the Soviet Union to construct “Socialist cities” in Siberia during the late 1920s and early 30s. The film draws on interviews of some of the last survivors of this time, including Jan Rutgers (of the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony), Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (of the Ernst May group), and Philipp Tolziner (of the “Bauhaus Brigade”), and on letters, articles, and lectures written by those who have already died, including Hans Schmidt, Mart Stam, Johannes van Loghem, and Ernst May. It also follows the daily lives of contemporary residents of Magnitogorsk, Orsk, Novokuznetsk, and Kemerovo.
On 20 October 1973, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II. From conception to completion, it had taken more than 15 years and over $100 million dollars.
A look at contemporary Paris through the lens of theories and ideologies of the past two centuries, with a particular focus on the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier.
The documentary tells the story of Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon's unique gift, brought to the world with the unending support of Lis, the love of his life.
A man with a perspective like no other on the planet. The leading structural engineer of the World Trade Center oversees its construction, haunted by its fall ever since.
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 Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) is one of the great figures of modern architecture, ranked alongside Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
In 1959 Hiroshi Teshigahara shot the following 16 mm footage of he and his father’s first trip to Barcelona and the outlying Catalonian countryside, including a visit to the home of Salvador Dali in Port Lligat.
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.
Fearful that the Russians would continue their lead in the space race and be the first to put a man on the moon, NASA felt an enormous pressure to push the Apollo Program forward as quickly as possible, though they knew that pushing too hard could lead to the ultimate disaster.
Set on May 18, 1993—the day on which Denmark voted to join the European Union, just a few months after they'd voted not to do so—the film follows eight or so disparate Danes (an escaped mental patient, a newly-famous singer, a business executive, and their assorted families and cohorts) as they unwittingly alter one another's lives, for better and for worse.
Filmmaker Ernesto Rimoch looks at the potent combination of love and ambition in this film about a couple who's so happy their daughter is marrying into a rich clan that they throw the best wedding ever, even if they can't afford it.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
A doctor and his wife move to a new city where they plan to start a new life. However, trouble strikes in the form of a police inspector who gets completely obsessed with the doctor's wife.
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Have you watched Sotsgorod: Cities for Utopia yet? What did you think about it?
