In 60 Elephants, Michael Klein and Sasha Pirker portray the thoughts and work of Yona Friedman, a ninety-five-year-old French architect and humanist who was awarded the Friedrich Kiesler prize in 2018. Friedman developed visions of an improvisation-capable, mobile architecture for a migrating global society as early as the 1950s and…
Third in a trilogy that includes Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), the film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, are arguing that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century,…
The mountain villages of the North-West Himalaya are the most remote, highest inhabited place on the planet. Children of the Snow Land is a feature documentary which gives the viewer the experience of being transported back to ways of life that have remained unchanged for the past 2,000 years, whilst…
City Dreamers is a film about our changing urban environment and four trailblazing women architects who have been working, observing and thinking about the transformations shaping the cities of today and tomorrow for over 70 years. Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Denise Scott Brown may…
After completing a feature documentary on New York’s High Line, award-winning filmmaker Thomas Piper met the inspirational designer and plantsman, Piet Oudolf, and the idea for a new project was born. Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf immerses viewers in Oudolf’s work and takes us inside his creative process,…
The chronic shortage of housing in the district of Central Havana has pushed the city upwardsobliging many people to dwell in makeshift houses onto the rooftops of the buildings. The documentary tracks down the stories of some of these residents and their resourcefulness in finding solutions to their problems as…
Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist known for his installations involving natural materials, such as rocks, ice, leaves, or branches that document the passage of time. Sixteen years after the release of the ground-breaking film Rivers and Tides – Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time, director Thomas Riedelsheimer has returned to…
Isolated from the chaos of humanity by an ice continent, Norilsk is a closed city, closed to foreigners. Largest city in the North of the world, it is also one of the most polluted on the planet. Norilsk Nickel, the leading producer of copper and nickel, has been in control since its…
The Wastelands of Berlin are unique. Emerging from war-time destruction, economic malaise, and geo-political division, these ostensibly empty sites evolved into laboratories for botanists, artists, and ordinary people seeking respite from the city. Today, however, these unusual spaces are fast disappearing. Natura Urbana explores the spontaneous diversity of plants in…
2500-year-old aqueduct of Qanate near Yazd (Sarkh) is considered an environmental UNESCO world heritage. Due to corruption and mismanagement the subterranean canals are not being maintained properly. Wastewater pollution is poisoning pure and clear water on its 84 km watercourse and causing its decay.
PALACE FOR THE PEOPLE tells the stories of five buildings, representative of socialist times and witnessing the historical turbulence in Eastern Europe in the second half of the XX century. The National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Moscow State University, Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Palace of Serbia in…
This documentary is a testimony of the construction of a very special building, the Botín Center for Arts & Culture, from its foundation to its inauguration in the bay of Santander, in the North of Spain. The architect, a contemporary master, Renzo Piano. The filmmaker, another contemporary master, Carlos Saura.
During the last century, the destruction of cultural heritage has had catastrophical consequences all over the world, and said war against culture is far from over. Unfortunately, it’s impact is growing. In both Syria and Iraque, the so-called ”cradles of civilization”, thousands of years worth of cultural heritage dissappear as…
A visually mesmerizing documentary that takes us to the underground Madrid, into a startling maze of tunnels, vast vaulted spaces, and railroad tracks. It presents a world of drastic defamiliarization, transforming the world that exists underneath the city into an imposingly strange and eerie scenery, as if looking into some…
How do we construct homes in today’s worldwide hotspots which are facing the challenges of climate change, globalization and migration? How do people create shelters and feel at home with others and in their bodies? Boris Benjamin Bertram’s film The Human Shelter, explores different people’s ways of creating their homes…
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with the original music by Fabrizio Campanelli, illustrates the birth, structure, set-up and relations with the Renzo Piano Foundation and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the purpose and the goals of the Archive. Drafts, sketches, models, renderings, drawings, particular techniques of completed structures – exhibited in…
The World Before Your Feet tells the unusual story of Matt Green, 37, who, gave up his job, his apartment and most of his possessions in order to walk every block of every street in New York City. Not being exactly sure why he’s doing it, he walks, for over…
Ioan-Matei Agapi, a charismatic documentary filmmaker in his 80’s from Romania owns a unique collection of 16mm films documenting almost fifty years of the city’s history. His daughter, also a filmmaker, has decided to make a film about her father’s impressive archives. In the unconventional surroundings of his old apartment,…
The creation of the Warsaw Ghetto as seen from both sides of the Ghetto wall, and its legacy in today’s city. New light on a tragic time of division, destruction and mass murder, incorporating unknown amateur Polish 8mm found footage and survivor testimony. In 1941 soon after the creation of…
Zhalanash is a port city over the Aral Sea. This place between a great water and a vast desert which used to be a prosperous link of the Soviet economy is just a shadow of its former glory today. In Marcin Sauter’s film, Zhalanash is not only about evocative landscape,…
