The Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival is returning to our local screens for 2022. Now in its 11th year, the festival will showcase a myriad of subject matter, from celebrating industry icons who spent their careers devoted to the craft to the radical thinkers who were fuelled by curiosity.
Here are our top picks from the festival:
High Maintenance
Documentary, 2022 / Barak Heymann
This documentary’s portrayal of world-famous sculptor Dani Karavan reveals his eccentricity and humour as he embarks on an emotional journey to revisit his monumental installations.
As his advanced age begins to catch up with him, Karavan is far from satisfied with his successful career as he becomes embroiled in a political and artistic conflict over his latest commission.
In addition to his depiction of the artist, the director addresses a wider issue at hand: the way in which art is manifested across the public and political spheres.
An Other City
Documentary, 2021 / Rasmus Wærn
At the turn of the 21st Century, Hammarby Sjöstad, a previously run-down and industrial area of Stockholm, Sweden, became a global model for reformative urban design. At the forefront of the district’s eco-conscious and aesthetic transformation was architect Jan Inghe.
An Other City takes the viewer on a tour of Stockholm’s urban developments, which in turn tells the story of Jan Inghe’s influential career.
House Works: reFraming the Modern House
Documentary, 2020 / Emily Richardson
This trilogy of short films, made over four years, reconstructs three British modernist homes as films, in an alternative reading of space and ways of living that were culturally connected, creative, and unconventional.
“The stories of each house are embedded in the surfaces, objects, and materials found within the domestic interior. The films express aspects of the potential stories held here,” shares director Emily Richardson.
The three films act as an intimate biographical portrait of architect and inhabitant, work and life.
Grethe Meyer – The Queen of Danish Design
Documentary, 2022 / Isabel Bernadette Brammer
Grethe Meyer was one of the great figures of the so-called ‘Golden Age of Danish Design’, but also one of the most overlooked. Meyer was a pioneer behind many functional designs that are still of great importance today, combining humanist thinking and scientific methodology.
This documentary tells the story of the woman behind the designs, combining her identity as a mother, an artist, and a pioneer in a powerful yet vulnerable narrative, providing perspective to her sacrifices, success, and legacy.
Mud Frontier: Architecture at the Borderlands
Documentary, 2021 / Leif Kaldor
Set in the remote San Luis Valley of Colorado, USA, this documentary follows Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, founders of design studio Rael San Fratello, in an experiment of contemporary technology, combined with traditional pottery-making to forge new methods of building homes.
Motivated by the neglect of traditional houses that once covered the region and the
rise of concrete buildings. This documentary is an analytical exercise that strives to hold on to cultural traditions while pushing the limits of local, renewable resources with the help of 21st-century technology.
Architect of Brutal Poetry
Documentary, 2021 / Ladislav Kaboš
Han Broos, a famous Brazilian architect, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This documentary, filed at his studio house in São Paulo, captures the memories of Broos, life and work before they’re gone.
Having produced around 400 projects over his 50-year career, the story of his work is embedded with his relationships, the environment and history, all of which have evolved since he made his mark on the landscape.
