Of Dreams and Cities: Architecture and Film
To mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the BFI will in November 2009 present Of Dreams and Cities - Architecture and Film at BFI Southbank and in the BFI Mediatheques at BFI Southbank, QUAD in Derby and the new Cambridge Central Library.
Architects and architecture have featured in a variety of ways in the cinema, and Of Dreams and Cities - Architecture and Film offers a wide range of films, from expressionist silent drama to contemporary documentary, from vintage Hollywood studio fare to European auteur classics and highly personal "essay films".
film list and comments:
No film season about architecture should omit The Fountainhead (1948), perhaps the most famous depiction of an architect - one whose Le Corbusier-like vision is of a future where skyscrapers rule.
Other classics with an important if often overlooked architectural component include Murnau's Sunrise (1927), with its evocation of the modern metropolis; Paul Strand's poetic Manhattan (1921); and Jacques Tati's comic fable Playtime (1967).
Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles's dark masterpiece, is rightly famous for its many impressive sets, not least Xanadu, the lavish palace of Charles Foster Kane.
Citizen Kane will be re-released on an extended run to coincide with the season.
(RIBA's words...)
... We also feature film as architectural document in lesser known but fascinating works like
Proud City: A Plan for London (1946), Twelve Views of Kensal House (1984) or A Convenient Truth:
Urban Solutions from Curitiba (2006). Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City (2008), meanwhile,
includes a passionate commentary on the consequences of urban planning. Perhaps no other
medium is as adept at capturing the essence of a building, rendered all the more poignant
when the original has disappeared or been altered beyond recognition.
A special selection of rare British films and TV documentaries from the BFI National Archive is
available to view free of charge in the Mediatheques, including László Moholy-Nagy’s New
Architecture at the London Zoo, and The Ten Year Plan, in which Carry On’s Charles Hawtrey
gamely promotes the post-war prefab.
The season has been programmed by Geoff Andrew, Head of Film Programme, BFI Southbank
and the Mediatheque titles were programmed by Simon McCallum, Curator, BFI Mediatheque.
Both are available for interview ....
The complete list of movies that RIBA is showing: programme at BFI Southbank:
SCREENINGS FILM SEASON | OF DREAMS AND CITIES
Los Angeles Plays Itself
USA 2003. Dir Thom Andersen. 169min.Video
A riveting and hugely enjoyable documentary created from scores of clips from fictional films shot and
set in Los Angeles, from which Anderson hopes to find and resurrect the real city. Anderson’s own
rueful voiceover guides us through this cinematic archaeology in two parts: The City as Background and
the City as Subject. Sections on the lost Bunker Hill neighbourhood resonate with contemporary
regeneration schemes.
A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil
USA 2006. Giovanni Vaz del Bello. 52min.EST
For 40 years the city of Curitiba has demonstrated how to transform problems into solutions. This
inspirational documentary shares ideas for cost-effective environmental changes in cities worldwide
based on Curitiba’s model, and the transformation of the city into one of the world’s most liveable
urban spaces.
Twelve Views of Kensal House
UK 1984 Peter Wyeth. 55min
Biography of West London’s 1936 model estate, echoing the work of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus in
Europe.
My Winnipeg
Canada 2008. Dir Guy Maddin. With Ann C Savage, Louis Negin, Amy Stewart, Darcy Fehr, Brendan
Cade. 80min.12A
Memories and reflections mingle with regret in Maddin’s “docu-fantasia” about his Canadian prairie
hometown. What spell does a hometown cast over the grown-up child? Maddin mixes animation,
archive footage and recreated scenes of childhood trauma in his usual neo-Soviet style in an attempt to
break free.
The Fugitive Futurist: A Q-Riosity by “Q”
1924. Dir Gaston Quiribet. 10min
Futuristic London by way of a ‘magic’ camera that can see beyond the limits of ordinary life.
Fri 30 Oct 18:40 NFT3, Sat 31 Oct 16:30 NFT2
L’Eclisse
Italy 1962. Dir Michelangelo Antonioni. With Alain Delon, Monica Vitti, Francisco Rabal, Lilla Brignone.
123min. EST. PG
Using magnificent shots of Rome and its 1950s suburbs initially developed for the Esposizione
Universale di Roma (EUR) as a backdrop for a couple’s doomed affair, L’eclisse completes Michelangelo
Antonioni’s film trilogy (started with L’avventura and La Notte) reaching the apotheosis of his modernist
style, returning to his favourite themes: individual and societal alienation and the difficulty of finding
connections in an increasingly mechanized world.
Sketches of Frank Gehry (click HERE to download)
USA 2005. Dir Sidney Pollack. 84min. 12A
This examination of the life and career of architect Frank Gehry engenders an emotional narrative in
conversations between Gehry and Pollack, and provides an insight into the world of the architect
through the rediscovery of early experiences, the potential of new technologies, experimenting on his
own home, and bringing an artist and sculptor’s sensibility to architecture.
Manhatta
USA 1921. Dir Paul Strand. 7min
The poetry of everyday life in New York City of 1921.
The Belly of an Architect (click HERE to download)
UK 1987. Dir Peter Greenaway. With Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lamber Wilson, Sergio Fantoni.
118min. 15
American architect Stourley Kracklite arrives in Italy to supervise an exhibition for a French architect,
Boullée. Over nine months he becomes obsessed with his belly, suffers stomach pains, and loses his
wife, exhibition, his unborn child and his own life. Through metaphors of pregnancy and architecture,
Greenaway constructs a poetic visual narrative of Rome that contrasts with the physical and mental
decay of the creative individual.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
USA 1927. Dir FW Murnau. With George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing. 94min.
The seductive city, represented by a murderous vamp, nearly destroys the idyll of two rural innocents.
Murnau’s first Hollywood film pairs breathtaking studio artifice with the naturalism of an unbearably
touching and luminous Janet Gaynor. Working with the best on the Fox lot (Edward Ulmer, Charles
Rosher, Karl Struss) Murnau offered up a gorgeous, groundbreaking masterpiece of visual, thematic and
moral contrasts.
The Fountainhead (click HERE to download)
USA 1949. Dir King Vidor. With Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, Patricia Neal, Kent Smith. 112min. U
Based on Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel expounding her “individualism” philosophy, The Fountainhead uses
architecture as a stage for the struggle between modernity and tradition, with the ambition of
humankind winning over doubt and convention. Howard Roark is an idealistic architect who
struggles in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The film follows his
battle to practise modern architecture despite an establishment focused on the worship of tradition.
Model Shop
France-USA 1968. Dir Jacques Demy. With Anouk Aimee, Gary Lockwood, Alexandra Hay, Carol Cole,
Tome Fielding. 95min.
Filming in English for Columbia, Demy brings a sadder but no wiser Lola to a Los Angeles not usually
depicted on screen: drab, enervating, industrial. A ravishing though tired Anouk Aimee works in a
tawdry pay-to-photo “model shop” where she meets ’Nam-bound burn out architect Gary Lockwood.
Distances and barriers abound: an alienatingly spread-out Los Angeles, emotional and geographical
distance, the model shop cameras. Cult band Spirit play themselves.
Of Time and the City
UK 2008. Dir Terence Davies. 72min. Digital. 12A.
The golden moments pass, and leave no trace. Chekhov, Mahler and Peggy Lee underpin a melancholy
eulogy for the people and places of a vanished Liverpool by way of a journey into Davies’ past. Davies’
rich narration links archival images with his homosexual self-actualisation, the terrors of Catholicism,
his loathing of the Fab Four, the Betty Windsor show, and the heartlessness of post-war planning policy.
Playtime (click HERE to download)
France 1967.Dir Jacques Tati. with Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden, France Rumilly. 124min. U
The familiar sites of Paris have been replaced by a grey Miesian steel and glass nightmare (not that it
bothers Tati’s American tourists). Hulot bumbles through the unfamiliar city, meeting the tourists, and
getting caught in a melee at a club. Tati built a giant cityscape set (Tativille) to illustrate the
soullessness of modern architecture and modern French life. Playtime bankrupted Tati and effectively
ended his career.
Proud City: A Plan for London
UK 1946. Dir Ralph Keene. 26min. Video
The original LCC project for the replanning and building of London explained by two architects
responsible for the plan, Sir Patrick Abercrombie and JH Forshaw.
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House
USA 1948. Dir HC Potter. Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Reginald Denny, Sharyn Moffat.
93min. U
Advertising executive Cary Grant dreams of escaping the cramped city with Myrna Loy and the kids. Led
up the garden path by architects, engineers and builders, the titular dream house in the suburbs turns
out to be an insanely troublesome money pit. Recently remade with Ice Cube, which proves that the
American suburban dream continues to flim flam and trip up the unwary.
Architectural Millinery
1954. Dir Sidney Petersen. 10min
FROM THE BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE/BFI MEDIATHEQUE COLLECTIONS
To celebrate the RIBA’s 175th year and BFI Southbank’s Architecture in Film season, the Mediatheques
will showcase Of Dreams and Cities, a collection that brings together a special selection of archive
rarities, offering a uniquely British perspective on our built environment.
The 20th century saw a great upheaval in the planning and design of British towns, cities and homes,
fuelled by overcrowding and the privations of war. This collection includes documentary portraits of
architects (Arena: Berthold Lubetkin, 1989) and architectural styles (Trellick Tower, 1991), but also looks at
how we use public spaces (Lido, 1995) and how artists have re-imagined them (Borderline, 2005). Despite
our love affair with the Victorian terrace, 1930s’ architectural ideals loom large in newsreels and
documentaries (An Ultra Modern House, 1931 and Moholy-Nagy’s New Architecture at the London Zoo,
1937), feature films (H.G. Wells’ prescient sci-fi fable Things to Come, 1936), and nostalgic evocations of
the period (England Home and Beauty, 1976).
Ten to try
Kensington Calling! (1930)
Squalid conditions in Kensington – and a bid for a brighter future.
Kensal House (1937)
A visionary community powered by the miracle of gas.
The Ten Year Plan (1945)
Charles Hawtrey promotes the utilitarian wonder of the prefab.
Charley in New Town (1948)
Suburban utopia explained in Halas & Batchelor’s animated guide for townies.
Living Architects: Denys Lasdun (1971)
The architect discusses his controversial vision for the National Theatre.
Omnibus (1982)
Bob Hoskins offers his unvarnished opinion on the architectural dilemmas facing the South Bank.
Building Sights: Byker Wall Newcastle (1988)
Beatrix Campbell explores a 20th century ’walled city’.
The Changing Face of Camberwell (1963)
Post-war progress in a South London borough.
South Bank (1964)
Look out for the National Film Theatre in this tour of the Thames’ ever-changing architectural
landscape.
Look at Life: High Living (1968)
The only way is up: the 1960s’ answer to Britain’s booming population.
England Home and Beauty (1976) Lido (Modern Times) (1995)
For a list of all titles currently available in the Mediatheque see www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque
An Ultra Modern House (1931)
2009 marks the 175th anniversary of the founding of the RIBA. To celebrate this milestone the
Institute has developed special events to be held throughout the year that aim to show the breadth of
the RIBA’s activities throughout the world of architecture, engage an even wider public and celebrate
the benefits to society of good design. For further information visit www.architecture.com
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