Architecture Week Film Festival

A collection of four fantastic new films about architects, buildings and architecture.

‘The Gates’
This documentary about New York City's biggest public art project ever began filming in 1979, as Christo and Jeanne-Claude began actively pushing their project ‘The Gates’ forward. In the wake of staunch governmental opposition, they were devastated – but refused to give up. Christo and Jeanne-Claude continued renegotiating with officials, planning the manufacture of materials, and most impressively, accomplishing the near-impossible task of gathering in only two years the 20 million dollars required to complete the project.
The film reveals the artists’ struggle and passion for their work, as well as delineating the process of realizing that work. It is rare that artists have the fortitude to fight through a process that takes over twenty years, and accomplishes their vision on such a grand scale. And it is even rarer to have documented the process over the course of the entire project - from conception of a dream to the fulfillment of its reality.
87 minutes, 2007, rated exempt.
http://www.mayslesfilms.com/companypages/films/films/gates.htm

'The Greening of Southie' - Presented by the NZ Green Building Council
72 minutes, 2008, rated exempt
The story of Boston's first LEED-certified residential green building, and the people who made it possible.
In a traditionally Irish-American working-class neighborhood a new kind of building has taken shape. From wheat-board cabinetry to recycled steel, bamboo flooring to dual-flush toilets, the Macallen building is something different: a leader in the emerging field of environmentally friendly design.
But Boston's steel-toed union workers aren't sure they like it. And when things on the building start to go wrong, the young developer has to keep the project from unraveling.
Building Boston's first LEED Gold-certified building turns out to be harder than anyone thought. Yet among the I-beams and brickwork emerges a small cadre of unlikely environmentalists who come to connect their work with the future of their children.
http://www.greeningofsouthie.com/

‘The Last Wright’
Frank Lloyd Wright's last standing hotel reflects a century of social, moral and economic change in a Midwest city.
In 1908, when Frank Lloyd Wright was considered the most innovative architect in Chicago, he traveled to Iowa to design a unique, mixed-use city block - a bank and adjoining hotel facing a park. Soon scandal and tragedy would ruin his career, but the Park Inn Hotel would remain as one of his last Prairie style structures. Through rare archival footage, period music and a look at stunning Wright masterpieces, this film offers a provocative, ironic tapestry of an American century, tracing the life, death and rebirth of a Midwest downtown through the prism of The Park Inn.
2008, 60 minutes, rated exempt
http://travelfilmcompany.com/the_last_wright.html

'Visual Acoustics'
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California’s modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.
83 minutes, 2008, rated exempt
http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/

More info at http://www.jasmax.com/#/Ideas/Films_for_Architecture_Week or http://www.academycinemas.co.nz/

Event listed by Gina Dellabarca

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