The Architecture Film Festival of Rotterdam

To connect architecture and cinema is always a feast. At Rotterdam, it's already taking place, maybe, the best of this mixture the AFFR.

From 6 to 9 October the LantarenVenster cinema in Rotterdam on Wilhelminapier is the epicentre of the 6th Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR). For four whole days film and architecture devotees can indulge themselves with a programme packed with shorts and feature films, documentaries about glamour architects, debates, talk shows and excursions.

Sundance Channel Architecture School

The initiative of Sundance Channel called Architecture School is of great interest.

The thing is that images, movement, visual contemplation are essential in architecture, however, it is really difficult to find good examples of filming architecture. Internet is the perfect media for making visual contents available, specially those in which architecture is unbeatable. To find the proper tone, the rhythm, the suitable filming style for architecture is not easy. Sundance AS gets really close the ideal.

The link takes you to the presentations of the protopypes done by the students of Tulane University for a house in New Orleans.

Koolhaas and the cinema

The film on the Bordaux House of Rem Koolhaas is an exception on architectural documentaries. Maybe too Dogma style, but the idea of presenting the house through the experience of the person who does the cleaning is great. The most interesting part is the begining because is truly cinematographic. Enjoy it. I am afraid the rest of the film is able to make dizzy because of the abuse of the subjective camera. Curious that the architecture that is supposed to derive from cinema is not so easy to become a film.

Ghosts in Segovia

Cockle-pickers at Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, UK

A car trapped by the tides at Morecambe bay, 400 meters from shore

Ai Qin Lin, who survived the Morecambe bay tragedy, and main character of the film

Ghosts is the way illegal Chinese immigrants and local British workers call each other. Ghosts is also the name of the documentary shown in Segovia last Sunday at the Hay Festival.

It is the true story of a group of 23 illegal Chinese workers that were killed in Lancashire, UK, in 2004. Nick Broomfield, the Director , said that there are 20 millions slaves in the world right now. He also has created a foundation to collect the half a million dollars the relatives of the killed worker have to pay the lenders. The film is an excellent example of art and politics interacting without contaminating each other: the suspense sequences are one of the best ever shoot.

I first knew about this tragedy few weeks ago while asking Rod Morgan (author of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology) about the exploitation of immigrants in the UK. Do not miss it, it is in DVD.

Una buena película

No puedo dejar de recomendar la película que acabo de ver en Madrid (en los cines Golem, metro Plaza España). Al otro lado, de Fatih Akin (cuidado que hay otra peli que se llama igual por ahí y que también quiero ver pero de la que no puedo opinar todavía). ¿Por qué hay que verla? porque es una excelente argumentación cinematográfica sobre un tema universal como es la muerte: es un trozo de vida (y muerte) filmada con emoción y efectividad. Cuenta con recursos cinematográficos (guión, puesta en escena, personajes, actores y actrices excelentes, fotografía, música) una bella versión de lo que es la muerte, y por contraposición la vida, que no deja indiferente a nadie (hijos, padres, madres, novios, novias, viejos, jóvenes, alumnos, alumnas...profesores y profesoras). Por cierto que el director, joven alemán hijo de turcos nacido en Berlín, tiene otra película anterior llamada Contra la pared que volvería a ver gustosamente y que recomiendo ampliamente, aunque creo que no está en cartelera.