
Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.
Bernie Rosendahl
Michael Meredith Hare
Paul Rogers
5.5Big Time gets up close with Danish architectural prodigy Bjarke Ingels over a period of six years while he is struggling to complete his largest projects yet, the Manhattan skyscraper W57 and Two World Trade Center.
8.0A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.
9.0A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.
0.0Ninety-year-old sound artist and comedian Henry “Sandy” Jacobs lives a quirky existence at the end of Sunnyside Drive, a steep and winding dirt road washed by fog from the Pacific Ocean. Sixty feet down the hill lives his eccentric 84-year-old friend and neighbor, architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Daniel Liebermann. These extraordinary old men, influential artists in the 1950s and ’60s, continue, each in their own way, to search the world for perfection. Sunnyside takes us to an extraordinary place, a microcosm with its own distinctive rhythm and remarkable inhabitants. It is a film about creativity, the capacity to dream and, ultimately, the transience of life.
0.0Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.
0.0Danish documentary about the disobedient schoolboy with a talent for painting, who became one of Denmark’s greatest architects. His ideas were ahead of their time and often received criticism, but today, 50 years after his death, Arne Jacobsen's schools, town halls and libraries are still with us, and they define modern Denmark.
0.0Two iconic British buildings - the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool and the Coal Exchange in Cardiff - are threatened with demolition and Nick Broomfield is on the case.
0.0Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.
0.0Egypt's only modernist architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) was committed to ecology and sustainability in his architecture. This film takes us with slow steps, in still images, to two villages he created. Fathy's historically grounded, forward-looking designs prompt us to reflect on the past as well as contemplate new solutions for the future.
0.0The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe.
0.0No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.
0.0The British architect based in Stockholm looks back on major projects of a long career inspired by European Modernism combined with his personal sensitivity to nature and community. Erskine is especially valued for his vital understanding of social interaction, exemplified in commissions for universities and housing complexes built from Scandinavia to Italy. The architect takes the camera on a tour of his buildings while offering revealing comments and interpretations.
5.8Paying tribute to some of America's only surviving drive-ins – and those who keep them running – this heartfelt documentary captures efforts to preserve these nostalgic theaters in small-towns across the country.
0.0Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. Witness the Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the health and well-being of communities surrounded by these extractive industries.
6.8This film is a portrait of unique cultural space for Spirits, Gods and People. While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cities, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century - Bamboo Theatre.
