Social & External
On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the islands unique character. Twelve years in the making, One Big Home follows one carpenters journey to understand the trend toward giant houses. When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, he takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera.
A merger of megastar music. Discover the story of multi-genre performer and fashion promoter, Beyonce Knowles sand the world's first hip hop billionaire, Jay-Z.
“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.
In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.
This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana
A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.
The Dynasty by the Direkt36 investigative center tells the story of the business dealings of the Prime Minister’s family over several decades. With hidden camera footage, it also shows the luxurious world built by Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz and his daughter Ráhel Orbán.
Lacey Schwartz grew up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity - despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family's explanation that her looks were inherited from her dark-skinned Sicilian grandfather. But when her parents abruptly split, her gut starts to tell her something different. At age of 18, she finally confronts her mother and learns the truth: her biological father was not the man who raised her, but a black man named Rodney with whom her mother had had an affair.
Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia
A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, an aging transvestite.
Filmed over four years, this documentary focuses on the impacts of gentrification as gay white professionals move into a largely black working-class neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio.
Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City reveals the fascinating life and complex legacy of architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham. In the midst of the late nineteenth century urban disorder, Burnham offered a powerful vision of what a civilized American city could look like, one that provided a compelling framework for Americans to make sense of the world around them. A timely, intriguing story in the American experience, Make No Little Plans explores Burnham's impact on the development of the American city as debate continues today about what urban planning means in a democratic society.
Tokyo, the largest city in the world, wants to create a new urban culture. It is returning to the urban traditions and building techniques of the small town. The aim is to create a new balance between megacity and small-scale garden city. Tokyo's architects are the driving force. They want to create a new urban culture with revolutionary ideas.
This Traveltalk series short visits Hungary's capital, Budapest.
The twelfth edition of the International Meeting of Collective Architectures was held in Palma de Mallorca, in the neighborhoods of La Soledat, Nou Llevant and Es Molinar, at the end of September 2019. The meeting focused on the imposition of false paradises and the description of the current mechanisms of urban transformation that expel people from their neighborhoods.
Features gourmets chowing down on bats, voodoo practitioners, a chap who has a fetish for being covered in bees and a gal who has the Eiffel Tower tattooed on her behind so she can sell the skin at a later date. These choice cuts are interspersed with the usual parade of prostitutes, transvestites and strippers.
Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, Bauhaus was supposed to unite sculpture, painting, design and architecture into a single combined constructive discipline. It is a synthesis of liberated imagination and stringent structure; cross-medial concepts that embellish and enrich our existence, illumination and clarity, order and playfulness. But Bauhaus was never just an artistic experiment. Confronted with the social conditions of that particular time, as well as the experience of WWI, the movement concerned itself with the political and social connotations of design from the very outset. Hence, Bauhaus history is not just the history of art, but also the history of an era that stretches from the early 20th century to the modern day.
This short documentary follows three Indigenous women as they practice ancestral forms of worship: drumming, singing, and using sweetgrass. These ancient spiritual traditions may at first seem at odds with urban life, but to Indigenous people in Canada who are used to praying in natural settings, the whole world is sacred space.
Hidayet Usta is a shoemaker in his early 80s who has made a living repairing shoes. Having separated from his wife years ago and with a strained relationship with his children, Hidayet lives alone, but contentedly in his own world.
With its fluid arrangement of black and white scenes paired with an immersive soundscape, Je me souviens d’un temps où personne ne joggait dans ce quartier is a celebration of the many faces of Park Extension. The film provides a glimpse inside a festive cultural gathering; the workshop of a meticulous artisan; and an alley where a young cyclist is learning to ride. With her restrained approach, the filmmaker hints little by little at a seemingly inevitable transformation, while the relentless onset of gentrification threatens the social fabric of a neighbourhood. After a critically acclaimed detour into audio documentary, Jenny Cartwright returns to the evocative force of images to evoke a rich and diverse community.
