The exhibition will be opened by a double portrait of architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. Further photographs will showcase the work of Álvaro Siza, Renzo Piano, and Rudolph Schindler, extraordinary personalities who have influenced entire generations of architects. The festival will also present the story of a community house built by self-help in Amsterdam, an original film essay about life in panel houses, a film about efforts for safer streets in Brooklyn, and a portrait of the largest artistic squat in Latin America. The festival will conclude with the unique feature debut of John Wilson, a well-known creator of the popular HBO series. Most films will be presented in their Czech premiere and generally will not be released in regular distribution. Many screenings will also be personally accompanied by foreign directors and other guests.
Advance ticket sales for the Prague part of the festival, which will offer the most extensive program and will take place in the Světozor, Edison Filmhub, and UMPRUM halls, start today. At the Světozor cinema, it is possible to take advantage of the affordable Archeditation. More information is available on the website www.filmarchitektura.cz.
The jubilee 15th edition will be opened by the American documentary Stardust: The Story of Love and Architecture, a portrait of the iconic architects and thinkers Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. Their shared vision challenged dominant modernism and turned attention to the aesthetics of everyday life, including commercial signs and neon-lit Las Vegas. Besides their partnership and creative synergy, the film also recalls the double standard that architect and co-author Scott Brown faced in the male-dominated world of architecture. The intimate film is made by their son Jim Venturi, who will personally attend the festival's opening. The Icons section will further offer the documentary The First Siza, which revisits the first realization of the significant Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza and reveals how its form has influenced the lives of its residents for decades. In Prague, audiences can look forward to meeting its director Sara Nunes. The observational documentary Construction Site follows the renowned Italian architect who designed dozens of significant buildings, Renzo Piano, during the reconstruction of a Parisian cinema and humorously captures the clash of artistic vision with practical reality. The film Schindler: Architect of Space will remind us of the pioneer of California's living style, Rudolph Schindler, who blurred the boundaries between interior and surrounding landscape.
The section Our City raises the question of where home ends and the city begins. The films follow how the shape of cities is shaped by the inhabitants themselves, as well as architects, politicians, and developers. One of the highlights of this year's edition will be the feature debut of John Wilson The History of Concrete, which premiered in the Czech Republic at the Karlovy Vary festival. The creator of the popular HBO series How To... with John Wilson uses concrete only as a starting point for a personal and witty observation of urban life filled with unexpected thoughts, encounters, and stories. The Prague screening will be accompanied by Aleš Stuchlý and Vít Schmarc from the show Čelisti Radia Wave. The efforts of artists to transform an abandoned Danish silo into an international art center are followed by the film The Power of the Silo (presented in Prague by director Carina Randløv), while Emergent City maps the residents' efforts to defend a Brooklyn industrial area from developers. In the documentary with elements of magical realism The Castle, an abandoned building in crime-ridden Palermo, Sicily becomes a refuge for children. The Prague screening will take place in the presence of the directing duo Virginia Nardelli and Stefano La Rosa. The Lions by the River Tigris tells the story of a fisherman protecting the last valuable remnant of a family palace in war-torn Mosul.
Various forms of collective housing, from panel housing estates to community projects, are in the spotlight of the section Together. De Warren: A Journey to Collective Living tells the story of young Dutch people who built a collective house for 36 households in Amsterdam through self-help. The Prague screening will be personally presented by the film's director and community member Sam van Zoest. Life in the panel houses of the Soviet era is explored in the original film that straddles documentary and animated film Welcome to Concrete. The director of the film Gregory Gan will be a guest in Prague and Brno. Two films will take the audience to São Paulo: Copan, a dreamy insight into the microcosm of Niemeyer's colossal apartment building, and Ouvidor, the story of the largest artistic squat in Latin America. The section will be complemented by a sensitive documentary Sanatorium about life in a brutalist spa complex on the Ukrainian coast, near which war rages.
The traditional section Inspiration, this year titled Our Own Path to a Shared Future, was prepared by American architect and founder of the international Architecture & Design Film Festival Kyle Bergman. The film Changing Lanes, which will be personally presented by director Ben Wolf, places efforts for safer streets in Brooklyn into a broader historical and political context. Prickly Mountain and My Design/Build Life returns to young architects who settled in Vermont in the 1960s and began to realize their unconventional designs themselves, portraying the personalities and homes at the birth of the Design/Build movement. The process of creating a research building designed for extreme conditions in Antarctica is documented in Building on the Edge.
A traditional block of short films Archi shorts with the subtitle So where are we going to live? connects housing as an everyday experience with political themes. From rental apartments and unfulfilled dreams of a home, it takes viewers through abandoned buildings revived by human initiative to artistic interventions in public space. It will include films such as Hotel Mokum, Holešovice, and Hellish Offer. Among them will also be the darkly humorous Hellish Offer, produced by the Kruh association for the Architecture Day festival, which transforms desperate housing searches into a series of increasingly terrifying property viewings.
Film and architecture will take place in Banská Bystrica, Brno, Březnice, Čáslav, Čelákovice, Český Krumlov, Frýdek-Místek, Havířov, Hradec Králové, Humpolec, Jablonec nad Nisou, Košice, Lanškroun, Olomouc, Ostopovice, Opava, Ostrava, Pardubice, Plzeň, Police nad Metují, Prague, Přerov, Roztoky near Prague, Slavonice, Svit, Šumperk, Tábor, Telč, Topoľčany, Trnava, Uherské Hradiště, Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Orlicí, Vysoké Mýto, Zlín, Zlaté Moravce, and Žilina.
Alongside the film festival, the 16th edition of the Architecture Day will take place from Thursday, October 1 to Tuesday, October 6, with this year's main theme also being housing, subtitled I Live, Therefore I Am. The program will connect architecture, public space creation, public debate, and housing policy, offering a view of historical and contemporary forms of housing, from traditional typologies and rental houses to post-war collective housing and today's searches for affordable and sustainable housing. It offers the general public the opportunity to view their surroundings through an unusual lens under the guidance of architects and other experts in the field, who will share interesting facts about their neighborhood, residence, and broader surroundings. Architecture Day does not only focus on architecture and urban creation but also on the broader contexts of the creation of every house, park, specific place, or city.
Both festivals are organized by KRUH association, which has been a significant promoter of both domestic and world architecture in our country for 26 years.
Links:
web: www.filmarchitektura.cz
Facebook: www.facebook.com/filmarchitektura
Instagram: www.instagram.com/filmarchitektura/
Organized by: Kruh, z.s.
Under the auspices of: Czech Chamber of Architects
With financial support from: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the capital city of Prague, the statutory city of Brno, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Camões - Portuguese Center in Prague, Italian Cultural Institute in Prague, SIPRAL, a.s., mmcitě, a.s.
Main media partner: Czech Radio Vltava
Media partners: ArtMap, ASB, CZECHDESIGN, ČSFD, Dolce Vita, ELLE Decoration, Dřevostavitel, EARCH, ERA21, GoOut, KAM in Brno, Cultural Magazine Uni, PragMoon, PROPAMÁTKY, Radio 1, Radio Wave
