Dear Maestro

A visual essay on contemporary Kiwi architecture.

A homage to the social housing architecture that is so atypical of Hong Kong - especially the Kwai Shing West Estate. About half of the population lives in such building complexes, where one experiences a strong sense of loneliness. The neighborhoods are the scene of modern living conditions, but also of social protests, which have been punishable by life imprisonment in Hong Kong since 2020 due to a new law.

Immigrant workers build a shopping mall for the upcoming 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 2016, nine people with migrant backgrounds are killed in a racist attack at the same mall.

Visiting examples of Herzog and de Meurons ground-breaking style, this film reflects their capacity to astonish and explore the way in which they transform what might otherwise be ordinary through new treatments and techniques.

The fifth project of the Living Architectures series, Inside Piano is composed of three films on three symbolic buildings of Renzo Piano's career. A visit throughout the prototype-building of the Centre Pompidou. An immersion in the soundproof world of a submarine floating in the depths of the Parisian underground. A journey aboard a luminous magic carpet of a highly sophisticated architectural machine. A humorous, caustic and quirky point of view.

Documentary on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

A biography documentary of the Argentine modernist architect Amancio Williams.

Documentary on the construction of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian Punjab region, planned by Albert Mayer and Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

A look at the legendary architect Ely Jacques Kahn, designer of over 60 skyscrapers that helped create the iconic Manhattan skyline.

Oľga Ondreičková is one of the exceptional figures of the first generation of Slovak architects. Her work is characterized by pragmatism, simplicity, and monumentality. Her husband is architect Pavel Ondreička, with whom she collaborated on several projects, as well as on the design of furniture, interiors, and artistic decorations. At the height of her career, Oľga Ondreičková led her own project team, which was rare for a woman at that time.

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

This feature documentary follow 5 architects on their determined journeys to continue building during wartime, as they seek a new people-focused identity for Ukrainian architecture. While Russia continues to turn former Ukrainian cities to dust, Ukraine’s leading architects are already building upwards & advanced new buildings are rising again as symbols of hope.

Big 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.

A 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.

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For the first time in history, women are designing our world. They are the rising stars in architecture-previously an all-male galaxy--and they are literally and figuratively changing the landscape. MAKING SPACE captures the compelling stories and outstanding designs of Annabelle Selldorf (NY), Farshid Moussavi (London), Odile Decq (Paris), Marianne McKenna (Toronto), and Kathryn Gustafson (Seattle & London). Without script or narration, each woman tells her own story, enhanced by the insights of commentators including Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger; MoMA's Peter Reed and Paola Antonelli; and others. Meryl Streep makes a special guest appearance.

In Buffalo, N.Y., some of the greatest works of American architecture relay a remarkable story that resonates with the universal themes of home, family and friendship. The charismatic Frank Lloyd Wright, destined to become America’s greatest architect, called Darwin Martin, an unassuming, wealthy businessman from Buffalo, his “best friend.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo reveals how Martin’s three decades of support fostered Wright’s career and led to some of the architect’s renowned masterpieces—the Larkin Administration Building, the Darwin Martin Estates and the Martin summer home, Graycliff—all in Buffalo, New York.

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three millennia. They created marvelous works in architecture and craftsmanship. These works of art depict the lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs of the Elamites.

Amie Siegel’s film installations often reveal the hidden narratives behind architecture and design, investigating the mechanisms by which objects, materials, and spaces accrue meaning and value. The Architects examines the processes of architectural creation, using the artist’s signature slow, parallel tracking shots to offer insight into the inner workings of multiple architecture firms, slicing through them laterally like an architect’s section plan... Siegel not only punctures the myth of the singular “master architect” but also poses questions around creative autonomy, the sociopolitics of labor, and the circulation of capital. (Source: MoMA)