Architecture and Design Films Showcase 2015

The West Coast’s largest showcase of Architecture & Design films.

In our second Architecture and Design Film series, we present a showcase of 14 films and more than 20 screenings that cover architecture and design from every angle and aspect. Come and discover the DIY graphic arts scene in the UK, a history of land art, tiny houses, contemporary women architects, the battle to renovate the Rijksmuseum, and much more.

Gray Matters
By Marco Orsini
Thu, Oct 1, 7:30 PM & Sun, Oct 4, 2 PM
Gray Matters explores the fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design, and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work, she became a critically acclaimed and sought-after designer and decorator before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she labored largely in obscurity. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested, and compelling. (2014, 73 min, digital)

The New Rijksmuseum
By Oeke Hoogendijk
Sat, Oct 3, 2 PM & Sun, Oct 4, 4 PM
In 2003, the ambitious renovation of one of the world's greatest museums began. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home to a glorious collection including masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer, was supposed to reopen its doors in 2008. But from the start, the project was opposed by unyielding bureaucrats and public resistance. The museum directors battled politicians, designers, curators, and even the Dutch Cyclists Union. Five years late, with costs exceeding half a billion dollars, the museum finally reopened. This epic documentary captures the entire story from design to completion, offering a fly-on-the-wall perspective on one of the most challenging museum construction projects ever conceived. (2014, 131 min, digital)

Estate, a Reverie
By Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Thu, Oct 8, 7:30 PM & Sun, Oct 11, 2 PM
This remarkably beautiful film was made in collaboration with the residents of the Haggerston public housing estate (in a borough of London) as it faced obliteration. Their voices tell of the way they lived together until ripped apart by capitalist forces seemingly intent on bulldozing the heart out of London’s communities to build luxury housing. Filmed over seven years, the film weaves the residents' own historical re-enactments, landscape and architectural studies, and dramatized scenes, ultimately asking how we might resist being framed exclusively through class, gender, ability, or disability, and even through geography. (2015, 83 min, digital)

“I believe this project will achieve something very significant for the times we are living in. It will remind us - and how appropriate this is for the medium of film - that, both politically and humanly, the past is not behind us, not obsolescent, but beside us and urgent.” - John Berger

Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture
By Ultan Guilfoyle
Thu, Oct 15, 7:30 PM & Sun, Oct 18, 4 PM
For the first time in history, women are creating some of the most exciting architectural designs in the world. How have they navigated their way to the top? What is the nature of their creative process? Are there gender differences in architectural design? This labor-of-love documentary profiles five dynamic and accomplished female architects: Annabelle Selldorf, Marianne McKenna, Kathryn Gustafson, Farshid Moussavi, and Odile Decq. Come with us on this intimate journey as we see how these women are transforming the landscape of the 21st century. (2014, 50 min, digital)
Preceded by the Academy Award nominated animated short Me and My Moulton, in which a young girl longs for a bicycle so that she can be more like the other kids in her Norwegian town, but her modernist architect parents see things differently. (2014, 14 min, digital)

Special Youth Screening: Extreme by Design
By Ralph King Jr. & Michael Schwarz
Sat, Oct 17, 1 PM
FREE admission
We follow Stanford students as they work in teams applying design thinking methods to develop products and services that serve the needs of the world's poor. One team works on a breathing device to keep babies alive in Bangladesh, another seeks a way to store drinking water in Indonesia. It's all part of the Design for Extreme Affordability course launched by the Stanford d.school. At a time of unprecedented global challenges, this film shows the power of human-centered design in creating innovative, effective and sustainable solutions to the complex problems facing us. (2013, 57 min, digital)

Made You Look
By Paul O’Connor & Anthony Peters
Thu, Oct 22, 7:30 PM & Sat, Oct 24, 4 PM
Made You Look is a documentary about the UK DIY graphic arts scene of the 21st century. Via candid interviews with top British creatives, publishers and agency owners we explore the fact that more people than ever seem to be turning to analog means of creating things, even though we are living at the height of the digital era. (2015, 80 min, digital)

Christiania: 40 Years of Occupation
By Richard Jackman & Robert Lawson
Sun, Oct 18, 2 PM & Sat, Oct 24, 2 PM
Director Robert Lawson in Person Oct 24
Christiania was founded in 1971 when youthful idealism and a severe housing shortage incited hundreds of young people to occupy 85 acres of deserted brick buildings, woods, ramparts, and canals in the center of Copenhagen. Finding it politically unpopular to evict the young settlers, the Danish government declared this squatter community a "short-term social experiment". Over forty years later, Christiania is still standing. Through interviews with longtime residents and police and government officials, the film explores consensus democracy, alternative building methods, drug policy, and Scandinavian culture in a provocative and often humorous character study of this fascinating community. (2014, 76 min, digital)

Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
By James Crump
Thu, Oct 29, 7:30 PM & Sun, Nov 1, 2 PM
Architecture, landscape, sculpture, technology, archaeology, and photography all converge in land art. Troublemakers unearths the history of land art, featuring a cadre of renegades who sought to transcend the limitations of painting and sculpture by producing earthworks on a monumental scale. Iconoclasts who changed the landscape of art forever, these revolutionary, antagonistic creatives risked their careers on radical artistic change and experimentation, and took on the establishment to produce art on their own terms. The film includes rare footage and interviews which unveil the enigmatic lives and careers of storied artists Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), Walter De Maria (The Lightning Field), and Michael Heizer (Double Negative). (2015, 72 min, digital)

Why a Film about Michele De Lucchi?
By Alessio Bozzer
Sat, Oct 31, 4:30 PM & Thu, Nov 5, 7:30 PM
Michele De Lucchi is one of the forefathers of postmodernism, and a pillar of the Memphis group that influenced the aesthetics of the 1980s with colorful, fun furniture that changed interior design forever. He also created the Cavart cabinet, a radical design that laid the foundations of postmodernism, as well as designing the Peace Bridge in Tbilisi and the iconic Tolomeo lamp, a worldwide bestseller. The film contains exclusive footage, including super-8 films of the 1970s with performances by the Cavart group and presentations of architectural projects in Milan, Venice and Georgia. (2014, 64 min, digital)

*Double Feature*
Microtopia & Tiny: A Story About Living Small
Sat, Oct 31, 2pm & Sun, Nov 1, 4pm
Microtopia
By Jesper Wachtmeister
Microtopia presents dreams of life in small, mobile or temporary spaces. Several successful architects, builders, and artists from different parts of the world propose a radical solution to living space in which all unnecessary things are removed and seemingly old and worn-out items are utilized. Behind all this is a simple question: How much space, stuff and comfort do we really need? Whether building islands from garbage, tents hanging from trees, micro-homes on wheels, residential sleeping pods, or experimental urban parasitic architecture, they are united by the effort to find ways to form new communities without environmental consequences. (2013, 55 min, digital)

-Followed by-
Tiny: A Story About Living Small
By Merete Mueller & Christopher Smith
From 1970 to 2010, the average size of a new house in America nearly doubled. Yet in recent years, many are redefining their “American Dream” to focus on flexibility, financial freedom, and quality of life over quantity of space. These self-proclaimed "Tiny Housers" live in homes smaller than the average parking space, often built on wheels to bypass building codes and zoning laws. Tiny takes us inside six of these homes stripped to their essentials, exploring the owners' stories and the design innovations that make them work. (2013, 62 min, digital)

Maker
By Mu-Ming Tsai
Sun, Nov 8, 2pm
Director in person
Maker looks into the current maker movement in America – a new wave of do-it-yourself and do-it-together fueled by passion and powered by new technologies. This movement subverts traditional manufacturing by building on innovative concepts such as open source, local manufacturing, crowd funding, and digital fabrication. Breaking the hobbyist movement stereotype, the film delves deep into this ecosystem of design and manufacturing in the internet era. (2014, 65 min, digital)

Sauerbruch Hutton Architects
By Harun Farocki
Sun, Nov 8, 3:30 PM
This compelling, and often humorous, study of a major architectural firm in Berlin follows partners Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton. The film gives a perspective on architects and designers at work and an insight into the creative process as they wrestle with ideas and expression. This is the final film by the brilliant Harun Farocki before his untimely death last year. (2013, 72 min, digital)

“The structures of these