In Ictu Oculi

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

Hong Kong’s Secret City

Not many people know that there is in the center of Hong Kong, a city of 50,000 inhabitants that escape authority, a city which holds no law and no order, the ‘walled city’. Never before has a television crew been allowed to enter this labyrinth. Christa Wesemann, an Austrian documentary filmmaker, has achieved this for the first time. The recordings from the ‘walled city’ are breathtaking pictures, as it has never seen the world. The history and daily flow in Walled City are ruled by the ‘triad’, a Chinese crime syndicate.

Arles, au cœur de la cité antique

Power to Change

Is it possible for the entire world to switch to decentralized and renewable energy sources by 2030? In this inspiring documentary, we meet with German politicians, scientists, farmers, social workers, activists and visionaries who say yes, and who all push forward for a global change in climate by changing the local power supply sources to renewable energy. Director Carl-A. Fechner is not ready to give up on our planet just yet, and POWER TO CHANGE is a welcome antidote to the pessimism that defines our era's visions of the future.

Berlin Babylon

A documentary focusing on the rebuilding projects in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Jean Nouvel: Guthrie Theater

French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once-industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out onto the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.

25 Bis

25 BIS is an intimate portrait of a masterpiece from the beginning of Auguste Perret’s career: the building located on 25 Bis, Rue Franklin in Paris. The film looks for the intangible and subjective element of the building’s history: the depth of its human print. The building appears as a sedimentation of life stories where each layer has left the trace of a passage. From the intimate nature of these stories, the film draws this fragile and undefined essence that could be called “the soul of the place”.

Relics of the Future

A documentary featuring internationally renowned photographer Toni Hafkenscheid as he explores hidden stories behind iconic architectural structures once considered "Visions of the Future" from the 1960's. This film is a light-hearted look at the way we perceive life and embrace modern advancements. It is a photography expose that becomes a personal journey of self-discovery while exploring innovative Visions of the Future that celebrate memories of Toni's, and our, collective past.

Homo Botanicus

Fifteen years after giving up his studies as a botanist, the filmmaker decides to visit his old professor — Julio Betancur — and returns to the tropical forests of Colombia with Julio and his new disciple, the young Cristian Castro. This reunion launches a voyage that immerses us in doubts over science and the way we see the world, as Julio and Cristian look for their beloved plants in remote forests. Through their work, the film shows us the importance of legacies, and the strength of that ancient bond between master and disciple. Their search also prompts a personal reflection on modern man’s obsession with controlling and mapping nature. In the diverse and nearly infinite world of the tropics, what is the point of counting plants forever?

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

Last Dance

Megha's Divorce

Arquitetura, A Transformação do Espaço

A film in three movements. In the first one, we find a historical synthesis of Brazilian architecture, from the slaves' dwellings to the Ministry of Education Building. In the second segment, architects such as Burle Marx, Lina Bo Bardi, Grigori Warchavchik and Joaquim Cardoso talk about architecture's social function. In the third movement, inhabitants of some Brazilian cities discuss the space they live in.

Derrière les murs de la Cité interdite

Son of Torum

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.

Cash Investigation “Superprofits : les multinationales s'habillent en vert”