A City Reborn

Rotterdam 2040 is a film about the city’s future, departing from the principle of Gyz La Rivière that you can’t look ahead without considering your past (something that hasn’t always been Rotterdam’s strongest feature). At high speed, La Rivière reconstructs the history of Rotterdam from the time before the bombings until now, and expands the developments to the year 2040 (100 years after the bombing and the 700th anniversary of the city). La Rivière made a specific choice to expose his personal vision, which is sometimes radical or a little absurd. So no experts and no talking heads, but an assault of old and new imagery, held together by La Rivière as the narrator of the film. Although Rotterdam 2040 deals with architecture and urban renewal, it is actually a film about people. The subjective experience of the city by its (future) occupants mainly determines the parade of architectural blunders and suggestions for the future. All tongue-in-cheek of course.

A confrontation and comparison of two church buildings, which could hardly be more different, but also a dialogue between various concepts of church and community: the Protestant Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen and the Catholic Cathedral in Orvieto.

Thousands of years before the Inca, a megalithic civilization was founded at Lake Titicaca which spread 500 miles to Cuzco, following a global flood that destroyed the Earth in 9000 BC. Its architects — Viracocha and his seven Shining Ones — disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared, yet the legacy of temples they left behind still baffles the modern mind. Filmed at Tiwanaku, Puma Punku, Cuzco, Quenqo, Saqsayhuaman, Amuru Machay, Quillarumiyoc, Pisac, Tombomachay, Huayna Picchu, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, Cutimbo, Silustani and Amaru Meru.

Author David Macaulay hosts CATHEDRAL, based on his award-winning book. Using a combination of spectacular location sequences and cinema-quality animation, the program surveys France's most famous churches. Travel back to 1214 to explore the design of Notre Dame de Beaulieu, a representative Gothic cathedral. The program tells period tales revealing fascinating stories of life and death, faith and despair, prosperity, and intrigue.

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.

A Swedish documentary about Vällingby.

The twelfth edition of the International Meeting of Collective Architectures was held in Palma de Mallorca, in the neighborhoods of La Soledat, Nou Llevant and Es Molinar, at the end of September 2019. The meeting focused on the imposition of false paradises and the description of the current mechanisms of urban transformation that expel people from their neighborhoods.

The documentary offers an overview of the district of Cidade Tiradentes and its inhabitants. It starts by the acquisition of land by the public authorities from the 1970s onwards, to the occupation of what is today one of the largest housing projects in Latin America.