L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui

Regarding Le Corbusier: the man and his architecture

Le Grand Méliès

A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as herself, and their son André as his own father.

Romantik – Kunst wider das Chaos

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.

Vertical Expectations

Vertical Expectations is a documentary that explores the nexus between architecture, development and society through an ethnographic analysis of the current building of the Shard.

Palace for the People

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

A Tour of the Louvre

The tumultuous history of the Louvre Museum, founded in 1793, and its fabulous art collections, an immortal testimony to the destiny of France and all of Europe.

John Hejduk: Builder of Worlds

A poet among architects and an innovator among educators, John Hejduk converses with poet David Shapiro at The Cooper Union about the mystery and spirit of architecture. His own sketches and structures are shown

Restoring a Masterpiece: The Renovation of Eastman Theatre

Take a look behind the curtain to see the vast history and recent renovation of one of Rochester, New York's most famous landmarks. Architects, theater personnel, historians, community leaders, and citizens provide in depth insight from start to finish in one of the most extensive renovations the city has ever seen.

Rome's Invisible City

With the help of a team of experts and the latest in 3-D scanning technology, Alexander Armstrong, along with Dr Michael Scott, explores the hidden underground treasures that made Rome the powerhouse of the ancient world.

Architecture And Power

A history of Bucharest, as seen in the light of the totalitarian architecture, having as leading idea the reality that the Power always exposes its purposes through architecture. After five decades of communism, the reality on thee Dark Ages is still waiting to be revealed, and architecture is one of the most obvious embodiments of the ideology to whom it was builtÉ It is not a movie about faults or about guilty peoples, but about official edifices of thee communist Romania and their story.

Kwai Shing West Estate

A homage to the social housing architecture that is so atypical of Hong Kong - especially the Kwai Shing West Estate. About half of the population lives in such building complexes, where one experiences a strong sense of loneliness. The neighborhoods are the scene of modern living conditions, but also of social protests, which have been punishable by life imprisonment in Hong Kong since 2020 due to a new law.

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is a story of an irreversible change seen through the eyes of one of Catalunias many invisible citizens: Laia. From her individual experiences, we will follow the process of Barcelona In Common from the public presentation as Guanyem Barcelona in June 2014, to the victory in the municipal elections of May 2015 that lead Ada Colau to be the first female mayor of Barcelona. This documentary wants to portray the will of this group of citizens to articulate a space of confluence of social movements, neighborhood and political actors, aiming to the conquest of municipal power.

Érase un vez Juan Marsé

On the occasion of awarding the Cervantes Prize to the Catalan writer Juan Marsé on 23 April 2009, family members, friends and writers offer a sincere portrait of the best chronicler of life in Barcelona, Catalonia, during the post-war period and the worst days of the General Franco dictatorship, in the forties and fifties, and during the economic development and the hard conquest of freedom, in the sixties and seventies.

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.

Frei Otto: Spanning the Future

The life and works of Frei Otto told in his own words and by those he inspired. An in-depth look at the rise of lightweight architecture, form finding, and its continued relevance for the future of architecture.