Resene Architecture and Design Film Festival 2021

City Dreamers

2018, Director: Joseph Hillel, 81 mins

City Dreamers is a film about four trailblazing women architects who have been working, observing and thinking about the transformations shaping the cities of today and tomorrow for over 70 years.

Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Denise Scott Brown may not be household names, but they've worked with some of the greatest architects of our time, including the likes of Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, leaving an indelible mark on several cities across North America and Europe.

They hold the titles of architect, urban planner, landscape architect, curator, educator and/or activist, amassing a long list of illustrious accomplishments, publications, honorary degrees and other distinctions over their respective careers. But while their achievements deserve to be more widely known, they are not the only focus of this feature documentary. City Dreamers is above all inspired by what has united these four women throughout their careers: the 'dream' of a fundamentally human and inclusive city.

Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint

2019, Director: Halina Dyrschka, 94 mins, subtitled

Hilma af Klint began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906 — bold, colourful, and untethered from any recognisable references to the physical world. It was years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and others would take similar strides to rid their own artwork of representational content. Yet while many of her better-known contemporaries published manifestos and exhibited widely, af Klint's ground-breaking paintings remained largely private. Ultimately, her work was all but unseen until 1986.

This is the first film about her life and work. It investigates the role accorded to women in art history and asks why Hilma af Klint was scandalously denied the status of a pioneer of modern art, and how this recognition is now finally taking place, with her exhibitions attracting millions of people worldwide.

* Premiere Event (includes film, a seltzer and a goodie bag)

Charlotte Perriand, Pioneer in the Art of Living

2019, Director: Stéphane Ghez, 53 mins, subtitled

French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand ranks among the great creative geniuses of the 20th Century, and is a founder of the Modernist movement. Many of her furniture designs have become contemporary icons, including her Chaise Longue Basculante (1928-29) that she's pictured on above, which is still produced by Cassina. Yet, compared to her male contemporaries, her 75-year career is relatively unknown.

This documentary explores Perriand's development from her own perspective, from the 1930s, when she made common cause with Le Corbusier and avant-garde art, to her discovery of Japan, where she was inspired to incorporate aspects of Japanese tradition into her practice of Modernism. The West tends to interpret empty space as a void or absence. Whereas in Japan it is viewed as the presence of possibilities. The rooms Perriand designed 'affirm emptiness'.

A free-spirited and politically engaged woman who had a passion for pushing the boundaries of modern design, an extraordinary energy and a great sensibility, Perriand was a revolutionary mind and a genuinely exceptional figure.

+ The Women of the Bauhaus

2019, Director: Susanne Radelhof, 43 mins, subtitled

Screening with Charlotte Perriand: Pioneer in the Art of Living. The founding of the Bauhaus was a modern sensation. Leaving the old behind, it heralded a new era: innovative design, pioneering architecture and the desire to build a radically new society. The Bauhaus wanted an absolute revolution – but failed with the issue of equal rights.

To this day, the Bauhaus is associated with names such as Walter Gropius, Paul Klee or Oskar Schlemmer. The promise of absolute equality attracted many women to the Bauhaus. Nearly 500 female artists studied at the legendary school and did pioneering work there. And yet they are still in the shadow of their male colleagues or are even totally forgotten. The works of the women of the Bauhaus have decisively shaped our current view of design.

This documentary is an homage to the forgotten women of Bauhaus. It's time to finally tell their stories. For both as women and as artists they are role models – courageous and inspiring pioneers of modernity.

Tokyo Ride

2020, Directors: Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine, 90 mins, subtitled

Bêka & Lemoine are celebrated architecture documentary makers, having previously screened Moriyama San – an exploration of a house designed by Ryue Nishizawa and its quirky owner, Mr Moriyama.

Here they return to Tokyo's busy daily life and press record on a road movie with the architect. In a very diaristic and personal way, the film takes us on board Ryue Nishizawa's vintage Alfa Romeo for a day of wandering in the streets of his Tokyo.

Nishizawa is one of the most talented and celebrated Japanese architects. In this film, rendered very spontaneously in black and white with a handheld camera, he narrates as he drives, musing on his strong relationship with the city and sharing some sites he personally loves, buildings that have influenced him, and some of his own architecture projects.

Delightfully personal and poetic, something in the intimacy of the car ride creates exceptional conditions to get to know his personality and his world.

* Opening Night (includes film, a glass of wine and nibbles)

The New Bauhaus: The Life and Legacy of Moholy Nagy

2019, Director: Alysa Nahmias, 89 mins, subtitled

Offering a different perspective, this film traces the artist's journey from the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany to founding the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, after immigrating to the US.

Beginning in the 1920s, Moholy-Nagy taught at the revolutionary Bauhaus school in Germany, alongside luminaries like Paul Klee, Josef & Anni Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marcel Breuer. But as the Nazis took over, many of the displaced Bauhaus masters found refuge in the US. One such master, László Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago to start the New Bauhaus.

The school was far from successful initially, but through its various incarnations, Moholy-Nagy's New Bauhaus forever transformed design, photography and arts education in the US and beyond.

Objects that are now ubiquitous in our culture, the Honey Bear, and the cover of the first issue of Playboy magazine were designed by students and alumni of the New Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy's' embrace of artistic versatility and technological possibility continues to reverberate in the art world today.

Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall

2019, Director: Alfred George Bailey, 92 mins

Jim Marshall was a maverick with a camera. He captured the heights of Rock'n'Roll music, and the seismic changes of an era.

His passion for music led him to capture some of the most iconic figures in music history including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, The Beatles last live concert, Johnny Cash, Woodstock, and the infamous image of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar. At this time, he also began capturing images of the iconic peace sign, which symbolised the powerful reaction to the war in Vietnam.

It's also a film about his devotion to his assistant, Amelia Davis. As a final act of gratitude, Marshall left his entire estate to her upon his death in 2010.

It was his abrasive but honest approach, combined with an incredible skill to build trust, that gave him exceptional access to his subjects and allowed him to expand his portfolio beyond celebrities – documenting history across the ages.

The City That Sold America

2018, Director: Ky Dickens, 69 mins

The City That Sold America is an entertaining, informative look at how Chicago's creative community pioneered modern advertising, forever influencing consumer behaviour and culture in America.

This playful documentary, spanning the whole of the 20th Century, offers intriguing insights into the development and enduring impact of some of the most creative advertising minds in the world, while simultaneously exploring our relationship with popular culture.

Buoyed by the Great Migration, Chicago soon became the epicentre of commercial production, spawning the modern advertising industry that continues to shape our behaviour today.

Chicago introduced ground-breaking, behaviour changing ideas like fast food chains, orange juice, soap operas, toothpaste and Kleenex — and also created advertising that launched brands like McDonalds, Kellogg's and Wrigley's.

Through in-depth interviews with key individuals, we see how many trends that define modern-day entertainment and consumer culture were trail-blazed in Chicago.

An Impossible Project

2020, Director: Jens Meurer, 97 mins, subtitled

Lovers of analogue, rejoice! This is the ultimate digital versus analogue documentary.

After acknowledging the dominance of digital, Polaroid announced it would shut down its last factory in 2008. Austrian scientist Dr Florian Kaps becomes a man with a mission: he sets out to save the last Polaroid factory in the world.

A playful and witty documentary unfolds as the eccentric Austrian biologist embarks on this David vs Goliath venture. But passion alone can't make up for a lack of business acumen. Banding with other admirers of the analogue past, he attempts to pull off the seemingly impossible—and make the world fall in love again with real things.

We're guided through the adventures of Dr Kaps and other committed world-changers. Footage is intercut with shots of characteristic analogue treasures such as telephones, record players and printing presses. Naturally, An Impossible Project film is shot on 35mm film.

* Auckland Museum Membership Presents (includes a glass of wine and an introduction by photographer Simon Devitt)

George Nakashima: Woodworker

2020, Director: John Nakashima, 118 mins, part subtitled

George Nakashima: Woodworker explores the indelible legacy of the iconic Japanese-American furniture maker. An architect, turned craftsman/designer, Nakashima changed woodworking by embracing the 'imperfections' and natural character of nature. The grandson of a Samurai, this American Nisei was ever-curious. Looking for ways to add meaning to his creative life, he set off with an around-the-world steamship ticket during the Great Depression. He finds life-changing answers in Japan and French India.

After returning to America, he began to create designs the world had never seen before. Revealing the many challenges faced by George and his family, this illuminating documentary, narrated by his nephew John, features rare interviews with George himself, and with his family, woodworkers and design historians. They reveal the spectrum of ways to understand this complex man who embraced the natural, the simple; the authenticity of craft. Not an architect, nor a designer but a woodworker.

Eames: The Painter + The Architect

Charles and Ray Eames were two of the most influential designers of the 20th Century, and their work still shapes how we live today. Charles was trained as an architect. Ray, his second wife, was an artist, and together they ran a design studio in Venice, California, that was a hive of creativity.

Their name is still most commonly associated with furniture sold by the Herman Miller company, but this film argues that their characteristic mix of the practical and the aesthetic has left traces in nearly every aspect of contemporary life.

Their motto was 'the best to the most for the least' – they firmly believed that good design should be available to everyone, no matter where you lived, or how much money you had. Ray also wisely said, "What works good is better than what looks good because what works good lasts".

Insightfully narrated by James Franco, this fascinating film brings to light a treasure trove of archival material: visually stunning films, love letters, photographs and artefacts produced in mind-boggling volume by Charles and Ray during the hypercreative 40 year epoch of the Eames Office.

Last screened at the festival in 2012

Where Architects Live

2014, Director: Francesca Moltini, 78 mins, subtitled

Eight architects, eight houses, eight stories, eight paradigms of contemporary living.

Where Architects Live gives an intriguing insight into the daily lives of some of the world's leading designers: Shigeru Ban, Mario Bellini, David Chipperfield, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, Zaha Hadid, Marcio Kogan, Daniel Libeskind and Bijoy Jain/Studio Mumbai.

Originally filmed for an exhibition of the same name at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, this documentary combines more than 30 video contributions. It intimately reveals the homes of the eight architects, broadening visions of domestic architecture and interior design, and suggesting that this discipline is most suited to evolution and experimentation.

We also get a glimpse into eight international cities at the centre of a great metamorphosis: Tokyo, Berlin, Mumbai, San Paolo, Milan, London, Paris and New York. A chance to approach the multiple forms of living, at different latitudes, through the construction of personal narrations, stories of spaces and objects, new images and hidden clues.

Last screened at the festival in 2017

Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf

2017, Director: Thomas Piper, 75 mins, subtitled

Celebrated Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf is famous for designing public works like New York City's popular High Line and Chicago's Millennium Park. His approach to design is so unique, so romantic, so seemingly effortless, but it is in fact a genius approach of careful structure and thoughtful layering that embraces all seasons – not just when a plant is flowering.

Beautifully shot and profiling exquisite gardens, this film gives us thoughtful insight into Oudolf's creative process. Through intimate discussions in all seasons in Piet's own gardens at Hummelo, and on visits to his signature public works in New York, Chicago and the Netherlands, we see and hear what motivates him.

From his aesthetic theories to his strikingly abstract sketches to the ecological implications of his ideas, Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf poetically reveals how Oudolf upends conventional notions of nature, public space, and, ultimately beauty itself.

Last screened at the festival in 2018

Modern Tide: Mid Century Architecture on Long Island

2014, Director: Jake Gorst, 88 mins

Long before Long Island was cool, before the masses of moneyed beachgoers hit its roads and before building lots sold for seven figures, Long Island was a haven for musicians, artists and architects. Captivated by its beauty, they began to build houses there – for living and holidaying in.

Modern Tide explores the work of the region's best post-war architects and designers, including Albert Frey, Wallace Harrison, Frank Lloyd Wright, Horace Gifford, Edward Durell Stone, Marcel Breuer, Andrew Geller, Philip Johnson, Charles Gwathmey, Barbara and Julian Neski, and others.

The film features interviews with architects and historians, as well as friends, families and clients of these influential designers. Rare archival material and gorgeous current-day cinematography highlight Long Island's often-unappreciated modernist architectural treasures.

Last screened at the festival in 2015