Southern California’s Coachella Valley, including the communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, boasts hundreds of extraordinary midcentury modern homes, public buildings and commercial structures. Modern designers such as William F. Cody, Albert Frey, William Krisel, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Donald Wexler, E. Stewart Williams left their collective mark on this desert paradise. Desert Utopia: Mid-Century Architecture in Palm Springs traces the history of modern architecture in Palm Springs from the first bold forays into modernist design to the preservation challenges facing the region today. Director Jake Gorst’s film features rare archival images and footage as well as interviews with historians, homeowners and the architects who helped create this mecca of modernism.
Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.
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.
An exploration of Cologne Cathedral, an emblematic monument and world heritage site. The towering place of worship took over 600 years to complete. Once the tallest building in the world, its ornate facade remains a masterpiece of Gothic architecture - and a reflection of the evolution of Franco-German relations.
Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.
Young real estate agent Clara Morales encouraged risky loans to her clients during the housing boom. She must now rescue her father’s home from foreclosure - a consequence of the loan she advised him to take.
How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. With the help of architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli, and Álvaro Siza Vieira, artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias, and drummer Sergé “Jojo” Mayer, he tries to make sense of the world and decipher our spiritual experiences using the seemingly abstract concepts of light, time, rhythm, sound, and shape. The superb cinematography turns this contemplative search into a multi-sensory experience.
In 2024, the iconic Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Gerrit Rietveld designed and built the house in close collaboration with his secret lover and creative partner Truus Schröder. Rietveld himself did not build his houses for eternity; he thought a life cycle of 50 years was sufficient. But the current owners of houses designed by Rietveld think differently about this. They pull out all the stops to renovate and preserve their Rietveld houses.
A documentary film about the Afro-American Woodstock concert held in Los Angeles seven years after the Watts riots. Director Mel Stuart mixes footage from the concert with footage of the living conditions in the current-day Watts neighborhood.
A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.
In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)
La Sagrada Familia – although still under construction in Barcelona – is a cathedral without any flaws. Almost 100 years after his death, experts are convinced that Gaudi was a mathematical genius and that each embellishing ornament of the Sagrada Familia actually serves an architectural purpose.
Best known for designing National Historic Landmarks such as St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch and the General Motors Technical Center, Saarinen also designed New York’s TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Yale University’s Ingalls Rink and Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, Virginia’s Dulles Airport, and modernist pedestal furniture like the Tulip chair.
White Flag : Flipside, Not Alright, Communication Breakdown G.B.H. : Gimme Fire, Wild Thing, I Am The Hunted 7 Seconds : This Is My Life, out of Touch, Skins brains guts Tesco Vee : worshiping /s - 7 seconds with a cat and a guessing game with: SSD doing Shangri-las, White Flag doing Pink Floyd & GBH doing the Buzzcocks. Battalion of Saints : I Wanna Make You Scream Minor Threat : Stand Up And Be Counted, Stepping Stone Rodney Mullen skating Minor Threat: betray & Jeff Nelson Brian baker (skating) it Follows Big Boys : Brickwall Stretch Marks : Professional Punks Urinals/100 Flowers : California Falling, Surfing With The Shaw, With: Keith Morris and D Boon Black Flag : Scream in Mike Muir's garage Kraut : Kill For Cash Minutemen : Split Red, Life As A Rehearsal, Ack Ack Ack Ack Angst : This Guns For You, Neil Armstrong Dickies : If Stuart Could Talk, Manny, Moe, and Jack, You Drive Me Ape, Gigantor ENDCLIPS: The Avengers, The Eyes, 45 Grave, SIN 34
Through concerts and interviews, folk-progressive group Harmonium takes Quebec culture to California. This documentary full of colour and sound, filmed in California in 1978, recounts the ups and downs of the journey of the Quebec musical group Harmonium, who came to feel the pulse of Americans and see if culture, their culture, can succeed in crossing borders.
1 Social Distortion– Under My Thumb 2 Social Distortion– 1945 3 Social Distortion– Playpen 4 The Vandals– Anarchy Burger 5 The Vandals– Hocus Pocus 6 Sin 34– Trip To San Francisco 7 Black Flag – Rise Above 8 Black Flag – Louie Louie 9 RF7– Vampire Lady 10 MDC – Police Riot At Mendiolas 11 Descendents – Hey Hey 12 Descendents – Bikeage 13 Descendents – Jean Is Dead 14 D.I.– Ballroom Blitz 15 D.I.– Richard Hung Himself 16 True Sounds Of Liberty*– Code Blue 17 Circle Jerks– Just Like You 18 Circle Jerks– Put A Little Love In Your Heart 19 Hüsker Dü– Everything Falls Apart 20 Youth Brigade– Sink With California 21 Blak Flaag– Ride The Bus
Television made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. Television producer by day, CIA assassin by night, Chuck Barris was recruited by the CIA at the height of his TV career and trained to become a covert operative. Or so Barris said.
Schaub and Schindelm’s documentary follows two Swiss star architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, on two very different projects: the national stadium for the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008 and a city area in the provincial town of Jinhua, China.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.