Streetscapes (Dialogue)
The Heinz Emigholz Collection
•
Documentary, 01-Jan-2017
There are streets, paths, motorways, alleys, boulevards and promenades. And there are life paths, intersections and dead ends. Two men sit on the shady raised platform of a brick building somewhere in Montevideo. They are submerged in a conversational marathon that never ceases throughout the entire film. The younger of the two is an analyst; the older man his analysand. Their nationalities are unclear; they speak a simple, internationally understandable English. They talk about a childhood among the ruins and the traumatised people of Germany shortly after the Second World War, about fleeing, about an obsessive interest in architecture and about manic writing. And they speak about work with the film camera, which is a technical instrument for the young analyst, but a lifeline for the old film director. The starting point of the six-day marathon is the psychological and physical block that prevents the director from starting a last great film, the Streetscapes saga. The conversation, which in a slow process dissolves the director’s block, takes place in changing places in extreme architectures. The camera, which portrays them both and sets them in relation to the architecture, becomes a third partner. The camera repeatedly disengages from where they are and explores the surrounding streets and neighbourhoods before returning to the two protagonists. The shell constructions of the Uruguayan builder Eliado Dieste where they sojourn resemble gigantic braincases and thus provide a framework for the site and the theme of the project that emerges in the course of their talk: trauma and architecture.
Festivals & Awards
- Berlinale Forum, 2017
- Hong Kong International Film Festival, 2017
- Art of the Real, Film Society of Lincoln Center NY, 2017
- BAFICI Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente, 2017
- IndieLisboa International Film Festival, 2017
- Singapore International Film Festival, 2017
- Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2017
- 2. Hamburger Film-In, 2017
- Underdox Filmfestival für Dokument und Experiment München, 2017
- Vancouver International Film Festival, 2017
- Milano Design Film Festival, 2017
- Viennale – Vienna International Film Festival, 2017
- Heinz Emigholz Retrospektive im Stadtkino Basel, 2017
- Human Rights Festival Zagreb, 2017
- RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN, Centre Pompidou Paris, 2018
- Images Festival Toronto, 2018
- Jeonju International Film Festival, 2018
- Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo 2019
- Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2019
Up Next in The Heinz Emigholz Collection
-
Parabeton
Parabeton starts with the first still existing dome built of concrete by the Romans in the 1st century BC in Baiae near Naples. Followed in chronological sequence by 17 buildings of Italian civil-engineer Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979) – inventor, grandmaster of concrete structures and the architec...
-
Goff in the Desert
62 buildings from the American architect Bruce Goff (1904-1982), from the smallest cottage to an impressive museum pavilion, and is the only cinematographic collection of almost all of his buildings still in existence. Bruce Goff is considered to be one of the ”greatest unknowns“ of American arch...
-
Perret in France and Algeria
The film presents 30 buildings and architectural ensembles of the French architects and construction engineers Auguste and Gustave Perret. Auguste Perret has masterfully refined concrete construction in the implementation of his projects and instilled in them a classical expression. Working in pa...
