Movie: Ben Building: Mussolini, Monuments and Modernism

Top 1 Billed Cast

Jonathan Meades
Jonathan Meades

Himself

  • HomePage

  • Overview

    Having previously investigated the architecture of Hitler and Stalin's regimes, Jonathan Meades turns his attention to another notorious 20th-century European dictator, Mussolini. His travels take him to Rome, Milan, Genoa, the new town of Sabaudia and the vast military memorials of Redipuglia and Monte Grappa. When it comes to the buildings of the fascist era, Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, with Mussolini caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome. The result was a variety of styles that still influence architecture today. Along the way, Meades ponders on the nature of fascism, the influence of the Futurists, and Mussolini's love of a fancy uniform.

  • Release Date

    2016-06-01

  • Average

    6.5

  • Rating:

    3.3 starts
  • Tagline

  • Genres

  • Languages:

    English
  • Keywords

Recommendations Movies

Lucky
43%

Lucky(en)

2017-06-16

Lucky, an undocumented immigrant, struggles to make his way in New York but finds himself caught in a web of crime and murder, forcing him to take extreme action.

With a Right to Kill
66%

With a Right to Kill(da)

2003-10-28

This documentary looks at the Danish resistance movement's execution of 400 informers during the Nazi occupation and the ensuing cover-up.

Flow
87%

Flow(xx)

2019-12-05

A turbulent day in a life, painted by air.

HG's Shadow
46%

HG's Shadow(en)

2017-05-30

A gay teenager is haunted by a shadowy presence while his parents are getting a divorce, he can't seem to convey his emotions to his best friend or make his family listen. His world is turned upside down when the shadow reveals to him a darker secret his family keeps to him.

Retando A La Muerte
54%

Retando A La Muerte(es)

1993-01-01

Young and Dangerous 4
63%

Young and Dangerous 4(cn)

1997-03-28

The boss of the Hung Hing gang, Tian Sang, has died. Ho Nam and Hon Bun find Sangs younger brother, Yang to lead the gang. Meanwhile, Hon Bun receives news that his younger brother, a leader of the Tuen Mun gang has been assasinated. They travel to Hong Kong to settle the matter.

The Return
66%

The Return(en)

2017-06-15

The Return is a 2016 documentary directed by Emmy Award winning director Erich Joiner chronicling Ford GT's return to 24 Hours of Le Mans after their 1966 1-2-3 victory.

Ni Jing: Thou Shalt Not Steal
78%

Ni Jing: Thou Shalt Not Steal(zh)

2013-11-09

Xiaofan, a young girl who works at a Karaoke Club, awakes one morning in a remote forest with her body covered in blood. As she struggles to find her way out, she tries to understand the drama circumstances which got her into the situation, events mainly related to her unpredictable boyfriend. She needs to make a decision that may change her life.

João, o Maestro
82%

João, o Maestro(pt)

2017-08-17

João Carlos Martins was a child with serious health problems. Because of this, he had a reclusive childhood. But one day, the piano came into his life. He arises as a stubborn boy who, in a few years turns into one of the biggest promises of the world classical music.

Monkeyshines, No. 1
49%

Monkeyshines, No. 1(xx)

1890-11-21

Experimental film made to test the original cylinder format of the Kinetoscope and believed to be the first film shot in the United States. It shows a blurry figure in white standing in one place making large gestures and is only a few seconds long.

Because I Love You
69%

Because I Love You(ko)

2017-01-04

Lee Hyeong is a talented songwriter. He happens to connect people who are not good with love. Those include Hyeong-Gyeong who wants to become a singer, but she suffers from stage fright. Scully is a high school student. She helps Lee Hyeong's spirit. Chan-Young is a colleague of Lee Hyeong and he likes Hyeong-Gyeong, but in vain.

Flow
93%

Flow(en)

2012-11-14

Flow
80%

Flow(en)

1996-01-01

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

The Tragedy of “W”
76%

The Tragedy of “W”(ja)

1984-12-15

A young girl is striving for stardom. In order to get a lead role in a new production, she agrees to stand-in for a famous star whose rich patron died in her arms one night. The real-life drama gradually comes to mirror the story of the play being performed by her.

Memorable
82%

Memorable(fr)

2019-06-11

Aging painter Louis and his wife Michelle struggle to cope with Louis' advancing dementia.

Souleymane's Story
77%

Souleymane's Story(fr)

2024-10-09

As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane repeats his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.

Return to Innocence
68%

Return to Innocence(en)

2001-05-05

A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.

The Evil Marriage
100%

The Evil Marriage(ur)

2019-11-01

Once upon a time, in a far away, across the dark jungle, a castle in the sky, there lived a king of Evils with his evil guards. One day, one of his magicians showed the magic mirror and shows a beautiful human girl in this mirror, and told that if he wants to continue to be a king he must marry this girl. The story of "The Evil Marriage movie" revolves around the character of "Nur" (a human girl) who was kidnapped by the Evil's king guards and took her to unfamiliar world where she will have to marry the evil in order for others to live. But, there is someone who sneaks into the dark jungle to reach the evil castle and rescues her.

Survive
59%

Survive(fr)

2024-06-19

A couple celebrates their son’s birthday in the middle of the ocean on their boat. A violent storm hits and it brings up hungry creatures from the depths and they fight for their survival.

The Return of Frank James
63%

The Return of Frank James(en)

1940-08-10

Farmer Frank and his ward hunt brother Jesse's killers, the back-shooting Fords.

Similar Movies

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
66%

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him(de)

2005-04-07

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Barcelone vu par Ricardo Bofill
100%

Barcelone vu par Ricardo Bofill(fr)

2003-01-01

A native of the capital of Catalonia, the architect-urban planner, to whom we owe the Saint-Honoré market in Paris and the Donnelley Building in Chicago, speaks of Barcelona with infectious passion. "It's a unique city, difficult to understand with conventional diagrams, he explains, criss-crossing the main arteries of the city". It is an unfinished city, constantly changing, where everything has the charm of the unfinished". With a sharp eye, Ricardo Bofill observes and comments on volumes and scrolls. Standing, in the nave of the Sagrada Familia, arms outstretched, it pivots on itself as if to take in space. "You have to have your eyes wide open, move quietly, and at the same time remember what's behind. This is how we have the sense of space. Otherwise this art does not exist."

In Residence: Ricardo Bofill
100%

In Residence: Ricardo Bofill(es)

2014-09-22

There are houses, and then there’s Ricardo Bofill’s house: a brutalist former cement factory of epic proportions on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. A grandiose monument to industrial architecture in the Catalonian town of Sant Just Desvern, La Fabrica is a poetic and personal space that redefines the notion of the conventional home. “Nowadays we want everyone who comes through our door to feel comfortable, but that's not Bofill’s idea here,” says filmmaker Albert Moya, who directed latest installment of In Residence. “It goes much further, you connect with the space in a more spiritual way.” Rising above lush gardens that mask the grounds’ unglamorous roots, the eight remaining silos that once hosted an endless stream of workmen and heavy machinery now house both Bofill’s private life, and his award-winning architecture and urban design practice.

Dicktatorship
62%

Dicktatorship(it)

2019-06-10

A documentary in which Luca Ragazzi and Gustav Hofer research the origins of sexism in the west and in Italy, the land of Berlusconi, Mussolini and Casanova, a nation with 887 words to say "penis".

Fernand Pouillon, Une architecture habitée
100%

Fernand Pouillon, Une architecture habitée(fr)

2017-01-01

In this documentary, Marie-Claire Rubinstein reveals to us, through the testimonies of the inhabitants who live there, the architectural achievements of the French urban planner Fernand Pouillon in Algiers. In particular the vast complexes of hundreds of social housing units, including the most famous Diar E Saâd (1953), Diar El Mahçoul (1954) and Climat de France (1957). The historical context, during the war of independence is related by the historian Benjamin Stora and Nadir Boumaza. This documentary also evokes the personality of Fernand Pouillon in a post-colonial context.

Fernand Pouillon, Le roman d'un architecte
100%

Fernand Pouillon, Le roman d'un architecte(fr)

2003-01-01

Constructing freestone buildings on the cheap, Pouillon made a name for himself at the end of the 1940s in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, shaking up his peers who only dreamed of towers and concrete bars. In Algiers, until Independence, he built in record time thousands of homes for the poorest, real urban projects inspired by traditional forms. In the Paris region, to build comfortable buildings quickly and well, nestled in the greenery, he becomes a promoter: this too adventurous bet leads him to prison and retains his reputation. Not very explicit about this complex affair, but seduced by a contemporary architecture that combines technical inventiveness and ancient references, Christian Meunier films by multiplying the angles of view. Today's lively atmospheres are interspersed with archive footage, while Pouillon's writings are read off. Moved, his collaborators evoke a demanding and generous man, with an infectious passion.

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City
75%

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City(pt)

1968-01-01

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

5½ years
100%

5½ years(el)

2022-03-10

In October 2020, the biggest trial in modern Greece comes to an end. The court ruling is clear: The Parliament’s third-largest party over several years is a criminal organization. What is it like to cover such a trial for five and a half years? A conversation with the people who were there.

From the West
0%

From the West(de)

2016-04-19

A film essay investigating the question of what “the West” means beyond the cardinal direction: a model of society inscribed itself in the Federal Republic of Germany’s postwar history and architecture. The narrator shifts among reflections on modern architecture and property relations, detailed scenes from childhood, and a passed-down memory of a “hemmed-in West Germany,” recalling the years of her parents’ membership in a 1970s communist splinter group.

Syndrome K
67%

Syndrome K(en)

2019-10-14

Syndrome K is the true story about a highly contagious, highly fictitious disease created by three Roman Catholic doctors during the holocaust to hide Jews in a Vatican-affiliated hospital.

Hong Kong’s Secret City
90%

Hong Kong’s Secret City(de)

1988-09-21

Not many people know that there is in the center of Hong Kong, a city of 50,000 inhabitants that escape authority, a city which holds no law and no order, the ‘walled city’. Never before has a television crew been allowed to enter this labyrinth. Christa Wesemann, an Austrian documentary filmmaker, has achieved this for the first time. The recordings from the ‘walled city’ are breathtaking pictures, as it has never seen the world. The history and daily flow in Walled City are ruled by the ‘triad’, a Chinese crime syndicate.

Petra: Secrets of the Ancient Builders
80%

Petra: Secrets of the Ancient Builders(en)

2019-06-30

In the heart of the Jordanian desert, the ancient city of Petra is full of mysteries. How was this architectural wonder created over 2,000 years ago? The technical prowess of Petra, an ancient city in southern Jordan, which was a wonder in the middle of the desert.

Palladio: The Power Of Architecture
60%

Palladio: The Power Of Architecture(it)

2019-05-20

Three restoration students and scholars from all over the world meet in a Palladian villa in view of a conference on Palladio. Meanwhile, in the United States of America, a young university professor asks his mentors, Kenneth Frampton and Peter Eisenman, how to be able to transmit Palladio's humanistic values to the new generations.

Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story
0%

Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story(en)

2020-02-06

Nicknamed “Architect to the Stars,” African American architect Paul R. Williams had an incredible life. Orphaned at the age of four, Williams grew up to build mansions for movie stars and millionaires in Southern California. From the early 1920s until his retirement 50 years later, Williams was one of the most successful architects in the country. His clients included Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. His name is associated with icons like the Beverly Hills Hotel, the original MCA Headquarters Building and LAX Airport. But at the height of his career Paul Williams wasn’t always welcome in the restaurants and hotels he designed or the neighborhoods where he built homes, because of his race. “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story” tells the compelling, but little known story, of how he used talent and perseverance to beat the odds and create a body of work that can be found from coast to coast.

INFRASTRATA
100%

INFRASTRATA(en)

2024-05-09

Amongst the contemplative static shots of decaying architecture weaves an abstract narrative unveiling the life-cycle of a higher perception, too large to perceive. Shot at various sites across south-east England, INFRASTRATA is a study on the concept of super-organisms, and the relationship between structure and nature.

White Terror
66%

White Terror(de)

2005-08-05

A video about Neo-Nazis originating in Sweden provides the starting point of an investigation of extremists' networks in Europe, Russia, and North America. Their propaganda is a message of hatred, war, and segregation.

Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture
0%

Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture(en)

2012-11-14

"Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture" focuses on the construction boom in the United States after World War II. Sometimes considered cold and unattractive, mid-century modern designs were a by-product of post-war optimism and reflected a nation's dedication to building a new future. This new architecture used modern materials such as reinforced concrete, glass and steel and was defined by clean lines, simple shapes and unornamented facades.

The Gaudi Code
80%

The Gaudi Code(de)

2015-03-14

La Sagrada Familia – although still under construction in Barcelona – is a cathedral without any flaws. Almost 100 years after his death, experts are convinced that Gaudi was a mathematical genius and that each embellishing ornament of the Sagrada Familia actually serves an architectural purpose.