Four Shorts on Architecture

David Macaulay: Cathedral

April 1986 •English

Author David Macaulay hosts CATHEDRAL, based on his award-winning book. Using a combination of spectacular location sequences and cinema-quality animation, the program surveys France's most famous churches. Travel back to 1214 to explore the design of Notre Dame de Beaulieu, a representative Gothic cathedral. The program tells period tales revealing fascinating stories of life and death, faith and despair, prosperity, and intrigue.

The Cooking Show

February 2021 •English

The cooking show is as old as television itself. But why do we like watching the making of a meal that most of us will never cook, let alone eat? Dirty Furniture’s jam-packed video essay is a rollercoaster ride through the history of the genre, at once a staple of television viewing and a hotpot of shifting perspectives and sociocultural values.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter

November 2011 •English

Interviews with the junior designers swept into the 24-7 world of "The Eamery" are the heart of this complex picture of a husband-and-wife creative team that define the era of Mid-Century Modernism. Narrated by James Franco, the film draws from a trove of archival material, primarily the stunning films and photographs produced in mind-boggling volume by Charles, Ray, and their staff during the hyper-creative forty years of the Eames Office.

Parallel Lives

April 2021 •English

Born June 8, 1964, Frank Matter films four "twins", born the same day as him, but in other latitudes. Interweaving their life stories with rich archival material, the filmmaker links these Parallel Lives with elements from his own biography, to compose a fascinating fresco where intimate trajectories are part of the advent of the global village.

The Road to Magnasanti

September 2017 •English

In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises, “Magnasanti” exposes the hellish consequences of top-down civic design. In his new documentary, John Wilson explores how New York City is creeping closer and closer to realizing this fictional metropolis.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

January 2012 •English

Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians and policy makers. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project's residents. In the post-War years, the American city changed in ways that made it unrecognizable from a generation earlier, privileging some and leaving others in its wake. The next time the city changes, remember Pruitt-Igoe.

Congonhas do Campo

January 1957 •Portuguese

Aspects of the city of Congonhas do Campo. The preponderance of baroque architecture, the Basilica of Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinho, the six chapels on the terrace leading to Morro do Maranhão. Each chapel contains statues representing moments of the Passion of Christ. While in the first chapel there is Santa Ceia figuration, in the second there is the Passo Horto scene. The kiss of betrayal and the imprisonment of Christ before the scene of the third chapel. In the fourth, two scenes are gathered: the coronation and the flagellation. On the fifth, the Christ bears the cross and the crucifixion is featured in the sixth chapel. The twelve apostles of Aleijadinho and the Latin inscriptions of each one. The interior of the Basilica and its main altar, with the figure of the Lord Dead.

The Ruins

September 2021 •English

A drawing of an ancient bathhouse in a French travel book to the Middle East sparks a visual poem, inspired by the Arab poetry tradition of "standing by the ruins". The ambivalence of the five-hundred-year-old image gestures towards enduring capitalist and colonial power dynamics. Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, archives and ruins, histories of sex, and histories of empire, all commingle in this essay film. What transpires is a web of visible and invisible threads where homosexuality in the Middle East today seems to be enmeshe

Huis clos pour un quartier

Invalid date •French

Um Documentário Brasileiro

May 2021 •Portuguese

Miz Cracker's Favorite Haunts

March 2024 •English

World-renowned Drag Queen Miz Cracker helps a Texas family that’s experiencing strange occurrences after renovating their 1892 home. As a lover of the paranormal, can Miz Cracker solve their ghost problem and help them coexist peacefully with the spirits?

The Architecture of Rudolf Steiner

January 1991 •English

Take a walking tour of not only the current Goetheanum, but also the original “First Goetheanum” that was destroyed by fire in 1924. Through the magic of the camera, LightFilled Productions has taken available photographs and recreated the First Goetheanum – beginning with construction. The camera guides the viewer along an intimate tour of the forms and expanses of this unique building. After the fire of 1924, we see the debris cleared and a new building rise out of its ashes. At the end, we are treated to a view of the surrounding buildings that have been built nearby – inspired by Steiner’s vision of architecture. The effect of this tour is heightened by the absence of narration, with music being the only sound as one “walks” along, pausing to look at these remarkable structures.

Two Museums

January 2014 •German

The film juxtaposes/compares two museums: The Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel, which Samuel Bickels (1909-1975) built there in 1948, and The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, built by Renzo Piano (b. 1937) 1986 . The method of natural lighting in Bickels‘s construction was the direct model for Piano, who adopted for his construction at the request of its patroness Dominique de Menil.

Impressions of Upper Mongolia

January 1976 •French

The genius Spanish painter Salvador Dalí undertakes an amazing journey through the unknown mental territories of Upper Mongolia in search of a giant hallucinogenic mushroom while paying an experimental tribute to the French poet Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), a visionary and eccentric writer, precursor of the surrealists and much admired by them.

Cinema Now

April 2022 •English

A fragmented collection of independent closed cinemas, in London during lockdown, captured on Super 8mm film.

Dread

July 1996 •English

An East Coast community in Ruatōria, New Zealand attempts to live in autarchy according to the tenets of their movement. Bob Marley, a prophet of our electronic age, is the soundtrack to the everyday lives of these Māori who feel closer to their own roots by observing a blend of Afro-Carribean Rastafarianism and the Ringatū faith. Merata Mita's camera respectfully portrays this singular cultural dialogue. The outsider cultures of Jamaicans, Ethiopians and Māori have come together, vibrating to a common cosmic chord. They find an underground brotherhood, across continents and seas.

The End Of The Line: Rochester's Subway

May 1995 •English

"The End of the Line - Rochester's Subway" tells the little-known story of the rail line that operated in a former section of the Erie Canal from 1927 until its abandonment in 1956. Produced in 1994 by filmmakers Fredrick Armstrong and James P. Harte, the forty-five minute documentary recounts the tale of an American city's bumpy ride through the Twentieth Century, from the perspective of a little engine that could, but didn't. The film has since been rereleased (2005) and now contains the main feature with special portions that were added as part of the rereleased version. These include a look at the only surviving subway car from the lines and a Phantom tun through the tunnels in their abandoned state, among others, for a total of 90 minutes of unique and well preserved historical information.

Vowellet - An Essay by Sarah Vowell

March 2005 •English

This Pixar documentary short follows Sarah Vowell, who plays herself as the title character, on why she is a superhero in her own way. (This short piece is included on the 2-Disc DVD for "The Incredibles", which was released in 2005.

Paint Until Dawn: a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan

June 2020 •English

Seeing is to painting what listening is to politics. Survival as an artist demands both. Paint Until Dawn is a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan (1927-1999), who painted all night to push the limits of vision. His life and thought reveal a correlation between art and activism through an interesting angle: the creative process itself.

Electric Eye

July 2021 •Portuguese

An experimental short film, shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, made by one person. Using recorded scenes and archival footage, the short presents an unorthodox narrative to explore the themes of self-identification, identity, gender expression and androgyny.