The heart of Caracas

A Short History of the Highrise

September 2013 •English

“A Short History of the Highrise” is an interactive documentary that explores the 2,500-year global history of vertical living and issues of social equality in an increasingly urbanized world. The centerpiece of the project is four short films. The first three (“Mud,” “Concrete” and “Glass”) draw on The New York Times's extraordinary visual archives, a repository of millions of photographs that have largely been unseen in decades. Each film is intended to evoke a chapter in a storybook, with rhyming narration and photographs brought to life with intricate animation. The fourth chapter (“Home”) comprises images submitted by the public. The interactive experience incorporates the films and, like a visual accordion, allows viewers to dig deeper into the project’s themes with additional archival materials, text and microgames.

A Capital Plan

January 1949 •English

This short documentary features a portrait of Ottawa in the mid-20th century, as the nascent Canadian capital grew with force but without direction. Street congestion, air pollution, and rail traffic were all the negative results of a city that had grown without being properly planned. French architect and urban designer Jacques Gréber stepped in to create a far-sighted plan for the future development of Ottawa. With tracks moved, factories relocated, and neighbourhoods redesigned as separate communities, Ottawa became the capital city of true beauty and dignity we know today.

Alternate Spaces

December 2022 •English

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area.

Swing con Son

April 2009 •Spanish

Music documentary by director Rafael Marziano Tinoco from Venezuela

World In A City

January 2016 •English

World in a City is a portrait of Toronto and the steps Torontonians are taking to create a society that welcomes and encourages new immigrants to flourish

El camino de las hormigas

March 1993 •Spanish

Four nights in Caracas. A documentary essay about chaos and civilization.

The Hugo Chavez Show

November 2008 •English

Frontline examines Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez chronicling his rise to power and offering insights into his personality, policies and his shrewd use of the media.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

April 2017 •English

Writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs fights to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s.

Venezuela es un Desorden

December 2018 •Spanish

Through humor, anecdotes and their songs, mythical Venezuelan ska band Desorden Público tells their story and that of three decades of their country.

Megalópolis

November 2021 •Spanish

Exploration of the territory in a delirious time-space journey through the largest Megalopolis in America.

Sin ti contigo

June 2010 •Spanish

Confessions of a father to his deceased daughter.

Los Hijos del Silencio

June 2018 •Spanish

How many parents lost their sons? How many sons lost their parents? A young boxer faces his biggest fight, although it is not the battle he expected, in a dark moment of life he faces fate with nothing to gain, like another son.

Brasília

January 2011 •Portuguese

Beauty Factory

February 2014 •English

From oratory classes to operating room, Beauty Factory follows five girls for four months as they compete for the coveted Miss Venezuela crown; revealing the process that has won Venezuela more international beauty pageants than any other country.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

March 2003 •English

Hugo Chavez was a colourful, unpredictable folk hero who was beloved by his nation’s working class. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and proved to be a tough, quixotic opponent to the power structure that wanted to depose him. When he was forcibly removed from office on 11 April 2002, two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace.

Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square

December 2022 •English

In 1959 New York City announced a "slum clearance plan" by Robert Moses that would displace 2,400 working class and immigrant families, and dozens of businesses, from the Cooper Square section of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Guided by the belief that urban renewal should benefit - not displace - residents, Frances Goldin and her neighbors formed the Cooper Square Committee and launched a campaign to save the neighborhood. Over five decades they fought politicians, developers, white flight, government abandonment, blight, violence, arson, drugs, and gentrification - cyclical forces that have destroyed so many working class neighborhoods across the US. Through tenacious organizing and hundreds of community meetings, they not only held their ground but also developed a vision of community control. Fifty three years later, they established the state's first community land trust - a diverse, permanently affordable neighborhood in the heart of the "real estate capital of the world."

Chiche

April 2023 •Spanish

Chiche is an ingenious and creative man who finds a strange rock, which he believes to be a fragment of a meteorite. Despite the little hope his family has in his projects, Chiche decides to bring it to an expert to determine its true origin.

Jaime Lerner - Uma História de Sonhos

September 2016 •Portuguese

Amancio Williams

November 2013 •English

A biography documentary of the Argentine modernist architect Amancio Williams.

Resolve in Venezuela

September 2023 •Spanish

The word "resolver" in the context of seeking solutions is a word-expression widely used in Venezuela. This documentary follows the lives of several characters during one day. We see how they feel, work, talk or do such different things that show the reality (or realities) of a country so diverse and, at the same time, so unknown to the world.