Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

2019-04-12 | en

Living memories

Living Memories is a documentary film that traces the history of the director’s neighborhood and native country, Haiti, through a personal and engaged perspective. Brick by brick, through encounters and wanderings throughout Port-au-Prince’s neighborhoods, archival photos, graffiti, and animations, the filmmaker introduces us to architect Léon Mathon and the residential architecture of the early 20th century. Over the ruins of her family home, Dominique, the director's mother, an architect like her father and grandfather before her, searches through her memories and significant places for traces of the past and the history of her country. Many of her landmarks are no longer there. From this tragedy arises a quest — a need to reconnect memory and history to understand the present better. The filmmaker follows her mother during her journey, capturing her reflections and conversations and documenting them to bring memories back to life.

| fr

Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace

Celebrating the splendor and grandeur of the great cinemas of the United States, built when movies were the acme of entertainment and the stories were larger than life, as were the venues designed to show them. The film also tracks the eventual decline of the palaces, through to today’s current preservation efforts. A tribute to America’s great art form and the great monuments created for audiences to enjoy them in.

2019-10-25 | en

The Fifth Facade: The Making of the Sydney Opera House

On 20 October 1973, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II. From conception to completion, it had taken more than 15 years and over $100 million dollars. In the years since its completion, the Sydney Opera House has become one of the most identifiable of Australia’s icons - ranking with the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Uluru, the koala and kangaroo - and is considered by many to be among the world's great architectural masterpieces.

1973-12-01 | en

Paris, le mystère du palais disparu

2023-09-07 | fr

Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece, Unity Temple is an homage to America’s most renowned architect. The film pulls back the curtain on Wright’s first public commission in the early 1900’s to the painstaking efforts to restore the 100 year old building back to its original beauty. The dedicated team of historians, craftspeople, members of the Unitarian congregation and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation reveal the history of one of Wright’s most innovative buildings that merged his love of architecture with his own spiritual values. The film intersperses the architect’s philosophies with quotes narrated by Brad Pitt.

2022-08-30 | en

Mies

No 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.

1986-01-01 | en

Monaco, le Grand Prix à tout prix

2021-05-22 | fr

Bauhaus 100

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

2019-08-21 | en

The Wedding in Monaco

Exclusive footage captures the wedding of American screen star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1956-05-17 | en

Jørn Utzon: The Man & the Architect

The documentary tells the story of Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon's unique gift, brought to the world with the unending support of Lis, the love of his life. His story is told by the people who were closest to him: his children, close colleagues and friends, who share their open, honest anecdotes, and experiences of him as an architect and a man. The film is a portrait of a devoted humanitarian and a sensitive and loving soul.

2018-10-14 | en

Château d'If : La Prison du comte de Monte-Cristo

2024-08-16 | fr

The Revelation of the Pyramids

For centuries, the Great Pyramids have fascinated Mankind. Patrice Pooyard's The Revelation Of The Pyramids reveals what lies behind the greatest of archaeological mysteries: a message of paramount importance for humanity. From China to Peru, from Egypt to Mexico, through the world's most enigmatic and most beautiful sites, the director has spent 6 years meeting eminent scientific specialists and verifying his discoveries. The result will shake the teaching of history to its very core, and revolutionize Egyptology entirely. A great odyssey along a breathtaking route climaxes in a revelation as unexpected as it is staggering.

2010-02-10 | fr

Grace Kelly: Destiny of a Princess

In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the sensational event.

2006-09-16 | fr

Warsaw: A City Divided

The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.

2019-05-11 | pl

The Builders of the Alhambra

Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.

2022-11-24 | es

Touristic Intents

touristic intents is a feature documentary film that explores the connection between mass tourism and political ideology. The film is centered on a case study: the never-completed Nazi resort of Prora, on Germany’s Baltic Sea, which was built on a mammoth scale beginning in 1936 to house 20,000 vacationing working-class Germans. This 4-mile-long building was used in propaganda to forward a promise of leisure time for the masses and strengthen sympathies between the workers and the Nazi party. Although the Nazis left the site unfinished, the Socialist East German government continued construction in the 1950s, using it for military training as well as housing for conscientious objectors pressed into labor by the GDR regime. After decades of abandonment, the massive edifice is now being redeveloped into apartments, condominiums, hotels, and a youth hostel.

2021-10-09 | en

The Whisper of Ziggurat: Untold Secrets of Elamite Civilization

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.

2020-10-26 | en

Echo Of The Past: The Terrence Tower

A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and patients who recount their memories of the behemoth facility while also exploring the abandoned building as it is today.

2012-06-26 | en

Behind the Walls of the Forbidden City

Secluded from view by nine-meter-high walls and composed of 980 buildings, the Forbidden City in Beijing is the largest imperial palace ever built in the world. Three majestic structures form its center and host the city's ceremonies, each of which is considered an architectural masterpiece. In 1406, construction of the Forbidden City was launched at the initiative of one of China's most powerful sovereigns and founder of the Ming dynasty: Yongle. Endowed with divine power, the construction has already resisted more than 200 earthquakes.

2024-03-05 | fr