The Architects (2014)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 33M
Director : Amie Siegel
Synopsis
Amie Siegel’s film installations often reveal the hidden narratives behind architecture and design, investigating the mechanisms by which objects, materials, and spaces accrue meaning and value. The Architects examines the processes of architectural creation, using the artist’s signature slow, parallel tracking shots to offer insight into the inner workings of multiple architecture firms, slicing through them laterally like an architect’s section plan... Siegel not only punctures the myth of the singular “master architect” but also poses questions around creative autonomy, the sociopolitics of labor, and the circulation of capital. (Source: MoMA)
Laura and John, grieved by a terrible loss, meet in Venice, where John is in charge of the restoration of a church, two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control.
A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana - a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernist buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey, a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library.
San Jose, California, 1906. Isolated in her labyrinthine mansion, eccentric firearm heiress Sarah Winchester believes that she is being haunted by the souls of those killed by the guns manufactured by her company.
After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.
Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place where she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. After a while, Ingrid starts to feel the presence of her husband in the flat when he is supposed to be at work. At the same time, her lonely neighbor who has grown tired of even the most extreme pornography shifts his attention to a woman across the street. Ingrid knows about this but her real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over.
Two men meet in Barcelona and after spending a day together they realize that they have already met twenty years ago.
A 15-year-old discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen, but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.
The American architect Kracklite arrives in Italy, supervising an exhibiton for a French architect, Boullée, famous for his oval structures. Tirelessly dedicated to the project, Kracklite's marriage quickly dissolves along with his health.
A musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by a cannibal. He follows them home, and here the victims become the aggressors.
Martin is a neurotic web designer taking baby steps out of the isolation of his one-room apartment and his virtual reality. Mariana is an artist fresh out of a a long relationship. They are perfect for each other, live on the same street, in opposite buildings, but they never meet. Can the movement of a modern city of three million people bring them together?
His buildings are garish, colorful and completely overloaded. Columns and glittering chandeliers everywhere, and way too much of everything. The Bolivian civil engineer and architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre (*1971) builds houses in El Alto for a nouveau riche upper class of the Aymara, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Bolivia.
Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.
In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
Consistent stylistic-thematic structures link and merge throughout the bewildering event chain. The distinction between organic forms and human artifacts is blurred by the visual style which is enigmatic without being ambiguous.
For centuries, archaeologists have been trying to understand the Aztec empire and reveal the truth about their origins. Now, new excavations could reveal astonishing secrets about how they lived and what life was like inside one of the greatest empires in history. Where did this group of nomadic people originate from? How did they undertake building their towering pyramids and other ambitious engineering feats using manpower alone? And how was such a powerful empire wiped out after just 200 years of power?
