A Film Festival Explores Buildings and the Lives They Touch
The fifth annual Architecture & Design Film Festival returns to New York City this month (October 16-20 at Tribeca Cinema), screening 25 short and feature-length films exploring the relationship between architecture and film.
At first blush, the idea of a film festival on architecture and design seems a little odd. Granted, it's hard to deny the role of architecture — known or unknown, existing or set design — in providing sometimes transcendent locations for films. But films about architecture don't tend to be as engrossing as their fictional counterparts.
Thankfully, festival co-directors Kyle Bergman and Laura Cardello are able to choose films from a much larger pool, presenting the highlights that profile legendary architects, walk us through buildings, show us a different side of a building's occupants, or reveal the joys of cities. The films do much more, but Bergman told me this year's event tends to be about urbanism, tapping into that last theme. There are also several films on houses and housing, the focus of this ideabook.
The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Desert Retreat
Directed by Mike Dorsey
2012 / 46 min / USA
The Oyler House is "a beautiful film," Bergman told me, about a working-class man named Richard Oyler who grew up in Southern California, headed off to war and returned to work a government job.
With a desire to build a modest family home but no knowledge of architecture, Oyler was given some books on architecture from a librarian. He proceeded to fall in love with the buildings of Richard Neutra, an Austrian emigre who played a large part in the explosion of modern architecture in the area in the middle of last century.
Oyler didn't have to convince Neutra much, for it was the breathtaking desert locale that made the unlikely pairing happen. In this sketch by Neutra, it's clear how he nestled the house in its site and oriented it toward the distant hills, as seen in the previous photo.
The house is now owned by actress Kelly Lynch and her husband, producer Mitch Glazer, who are interviewed in the film. (The "archiphiles" also own a house designed by John Lautner, another famous L.A. architect.) Oyler is also interviewed, as are two of Neutra's sons.
The Barragán House. A Universal Value
Directed by Tufic Makhlouf Akl
2011 / 30 min / Mexico
Mexican architect Luis Barragán's own house is one of the most celebrated modern houses (it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list), albeit one that departs from what is usually considered modern.
Yes, the walls are planar and kept free from ornament, but color is used generously — yet carefully.
The landscape is also an integral part of the house, whether in carefully framed views or as an extension of the house's functions into courtyards.
Built on Narrow Land
Directed by Malachi Connolly
2013 / 64 min / USA
This film tells two stories: how modern architects like Walter Gropius were able to build modern, Bauhaus-esque cottages in conservative Cape Cod; and what happened to the houses after the land became part of Cape Cod National Seashore in 1959. Upon the death of the houses' owners, the buildings became National Parks property and very few remain.
The multifaceted story looks at a few issues that are strongly contested in the United States: how to build on and with nature (it's precarious, if this photo is any indication), and the value of private property when eminent domain rolls around.
The Absent Column
Directed by Nathan Eddy
2013 / 8 min / USA
A couple of non-residential films in ADFF of interest (at least to me) include one on Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago. Preservationists fought the city and unfortunately lost a sculptural concrete building by the architect of the famous Marina City (aka "corn cob towers").
The Human Scale
Directed by Andreas Dalsgaard
2012 / 77 min / Denmark
The influential Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl is at the heart of this film about what happens when the focus on building cities is the "life between buildings," per the title of one of Gehl's famous books. Gehl is responsible for much of the pedestrianization of Copenhagen's streets (pictured here), and he brought that same thinking to New York City to make areas like Times Square better spaces for people instead of cars.
Info: The Architecture & Design Film Festival, founded in 2009, takes place from October 16-20, 2013, at Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St., New York City. The festival then plays in Los Angeles (March 12-16, 2014) and Chicago (April 24-28, 2014).
