Resene Architecture + Design Film Festival 2017

The Resene Architecture and Design Film Festival has grown to be one of the largest architecture and design film festivals in the world. Celebrating its sixth year, the festival curators Tracey Lee and Clare Buchanan release a fresh selection of unique and intriguing international films chosen to stimulate the idea that each of us have a part to play in how our spaces and places are created, and also how our planet is affected in the process…

Where Architects Live

8 architects, 8 houses, 8 stories, 8 paradigms of contemporary living. Presented at Salone del Mobile, part of Milan Design Week 2014, 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.

Director: Francesca Molteni. Year: 2014. Duration: 78 mins. Country: Italy.

Uncommon Sense: The Life and Architecture of Laurie Baker

After a chance meeting with Gandhi, Pritzker (Nobel) nominated architect often called The Father of Indian Green Architecture Laurie Baker goes to India and quietly works in the remote Himalayas and forests of India for over 20 years. At age 50, Baker returns to eventually democratise architecture with his unusual radical ideas, making the “impossible”dream of strong, green, beautiful yet cheap homes a reality for thousands in India who could never have otherwise afforded a house.

2016, Director: Vineet Radhakrishnan, 68 min, subtitled.

Walls / Muros

When the Berlin Wall fell, the idea of separation was dismissed as something from the past. Reality, sadly, is exactly the opposite — never in the history of humanity have we had so many walls. Now, with Trump’s America, we are threatened with another. This film narrates real stories of people who live on both sides of very different walls. The division between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the separation wall between the United States and Mexico, the fence in Melilla that serves as a border between Spain and Morocco.

2015, Directors: Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo Molina, 82 min, subtitled.

The Incomparable Rose Hartman

Renowned photographer Rose Hartman is no shrinking violet. She doesn’t let anything get in the way of whatever party, fashion show or opening she wants to shoot, not even an invitation. Some call her brash, some say she’s rude, but everyone agrees her shrewd eye has defined the New York City social scene for decades.

A fixture at Studio 54 in the late 1970s, she reveled in stealthily documenting stars like Mick and Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol. She was the first to move behind the curtains of Fashion Week catwalks to shoot models and designers at work, making quick fans of designers such as Donna Karan and Carolina Herrera. But what motivates her to snap the intimate moments of celebrity and fashion? Is she simply working, or is she working to belong? Moving seamlessly between street art and portraiture, Hartman slows down just long enough to allow this energetic profile to capture her for a change.

2016, Director: Øtis Mass, 70 min.

A New Economy

What if working together for the good of all was the most common business model? This film tracks several organisations as they use non- traditional business models to strive towards building a more co-operative future. Among them are a small craft-brew co-op, a peer-to-peer open hardware lab and an urban agricultural social enterprise. Other stories examine housing, public spaces and the use of technology in building community — all the while blending the economic and social needs of a functioning new economy with co-operative values and principles as its base. Revolutionary, sustainable and dedicated to a people-friendly future, these businesses show there are many ways to make money that needn’t sacrifice social values.

2015, Director: Trevor Meier, 85 min.

For a downloadable programme and booking, see [here]