http://www.goethe.de/ins/hu/bud/kue/tanz/tanzchor/de8181006.htm

Design Onscreen is a nonprofit foundation based in Denver, Colorado and dedicated to producing, promoting and preserving great films on architecture and design.  Founded in 2007 by documentary enthusiasts Kirk Brown and Jill Wiltse, Design Onscreen?s documentaries include: Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island (2012); Desert Utopia: Midcentury Architecture in Palm Springs (2011); Contemporary Days: The Designs of Lucienne and Robin Day (2010); William Krisel, Architect (2010), Journeyman Architect: The Life?and Work of Donald Wexler (2009) and Hella Jongerius: Contemporary Archetypes (2009).

We thank Budapest Architecture Film Days for including two Design Onscreen?s films in this year?s line-up. Desert Utopia: Midcentury Architecture in Palm Springs details the stunning architecture in California?s leading modernist mecca and explores the history of some of the era?s most original architects, including Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, John Lautner and E. Stewart Williams. Using rare archival footage and special access to many private homes, Desert Utopia offers an inside look at a community whose appreciation for architecture has created veritable nature preserve of modernist treasures.   Hella Jongerius: Contemporary Archetypes focuses on the creative process of one of the world?s top designers and her work for Vitra, Maharam and Royal Tichelaar.  In addition, the film explores the ?dance? inherent in any relationship between modern designers and manufacturers?each learning from, and bending with, the other. This film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Museum of Arts and Design in 2009.

In addition to producing films, Design Onscreen also showcases the best in architecture and design films at festivals and series around the world. Since 2009, Design Onscreen has co-produced successful annual fests in Palm Springs and Denver, as well as co-sponsoring other new fests in Moscow and Toronto.

In May 2012, we?ll be presenting our biggest and most ambitious fest yet ? a 10 day, 20 film, 40 screening architecture and design film festival in Auckland, New Zealand, in partnership with Rialto Cinemas.

We?re delighted to witness and support the spread of these types of film festivals around the world.  Wherever we go, we see that these film screenings offer ideal settings for people who are passionate about architecture and design to gather in in-person (rather than just on the Web) to share ideas, opinions and projects. In each location, we find that these festivals bring together and often strengthen the local design community.  We hope that the same is true in Budapest this year!

We also thank Jord den Hollander and his team at the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR) for providing such a great and pioneering example of how to produce a truly excellent architecture and design film festival.  AFFR has also provided a valuable forum and connection point for those of us who organize the many new festivals of this type now blooming around the world.

So thanks for supporting great films on design, and we hope that you enjoy the 2012 Budapest Architecture Film Days. May this festival will continue to grow and prosper for many years to come!

Please visit www.designonscreen.org for more information on our organization.

Heather Purcell Leja
Executive Director
Design Onscreen — The Initiative for Architecture and Design on Film

Dancing in the rebuilt Neues Museum and on the waving steel sheets of Frank Gehry, freerunning in Copenhagen and skateboarding in a run-down housing estate. Keeping off the grass in Eastern Hungary and jumping on the roof in the Hudson Valley. Starchitects, bloodthirsty pensioners, and a hidden camera. Why do Danish traceurs want to move to a playground and why don?t Józsa skaters just go back to theirs? Poetic images, graceful motions, the delicate play of the muscles. Take your skateboards and sod off or I?ll get my axe.

Memories of modernism

Did modernism really die on March 16, 1972, with the demolition of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex as Charles Jencks claimed? Or is it just that the image of the collapsing blocks has become an icon for the history of architecture, obscuring the social factors? How is it possible to preserve the heritage of modernism in Palm Springs and how was it possible to destroy it in New Orleans? This section recalls the micro- and macro-utopias of modernist architecture from the beginnings of the Bauhaus to Victor Gruen?s experiments with the shopping towns and the car-free cities.

Everyday life of buldings

The HQ of B&B Italia in Milan, the Antwerp railway station, the buildings of the Dutch embassies are all extrovert buildings. The first was used by Renzo Piano to experiment with turning the structure inside out as a preparation for the Pompidou Centre, the second aimed to proclaim the wealth of Leopold II and Belgium, while the carefully designed embassies wanted to embody the attitude and architecture of the Netherlands in foreign countries. But after a while, all buildings start to live their own lives, due to their interactions with the employees, the travelers, and the locals. These three films tries to map these connections, either through the eyes of the company workers, or by exploring their political backgrounds, or being inspired by literary references.

Portraits

One film about an architect, one about a desgner, and one about an architect / designer / filmmaker couple. Where do the fields end and where do they overlap? Is it possible to find common points in the working methods of Hella Jongerius and Norman Foster and in the way Charles and Ray Eames ran their studio, decades before? How much should we know about them beyond their works, how much they wanted or want to reveal about themselves, and what do their creations reveal about them?

Post cities

Critical situations?in the settlement, in the flat, in the metropolis; on a Caspian oil platform, in the kommunalkas of Saint Petersburg, and on the streets of Detroit. These three levels also correspond with the domains of the secret, the private and the public. Just like the hellish Russian communal apartment, the kommunalka; the once closely guarded Azerbaijani settlement of oil workers is the heritage of the USSR. Now, for the first time, we can get an insight into the history of its founding, decline and unexpected revival, due to the skyrocketing oil prices. This factor, however, on the other side of the world, played a major role in the collapse of the Detroit motor industry, calling for a movie that would literally project the city?s roaring past onto its troubled present.

In 1999 in Rotterdam we organized a symposium on the topic of the image of the city. We showed the obvious films, like Metropolis, Blade Runner and we found out that there was lot of interest in the topic. I toke my chance and the year after we organized a very small event with only architectural films. We had about 8 documentaries and feature films. Since then we have grown immensely into an organisation that shows more than hundred documentaries and feature films. We also keep a database with many films that help similar festivals in the programming. I helped many other festival to start, was involved with Budapest, after I went to Russia, I did a festival on film and architecture in Warsaw.

Photo: Frank Hanswijk

Who is watching architecture films?

Everybody love films and everybody lives in a house makes use of the public space. Architecture and film are the most influential art forms of the 20st century and it will be of the next century and the combinations of both disciplines are very important.

You were educated both in architecture and film. Do you see some overlaps in the working methods of these professions?

JdH: The process for me is the same because in both disciplines there is structure and meaning expressed in a different way. Everybody is looking at architecture the way it expresses itself though aesthetics, the material, the space but there is a meaning, a storytelling too and if you know that second layer architecture becomes very interesting. When you start a project it helps when you can make use of that other layer. Like in the film it is never straightforward. There is always a tension, a conflict like in architecture. I am teaching in both disciplines too and you can see that architects become better architects if they know how to work with film. In architecture it is about space and in film it is about time. But when you combine both, the way architecture translates in time you can put emotions in architecture and you can add structure to film.

How you became involved with the Budapest Architecture Film Days?

JdH: I was invited because of a film and I liked your festival and the people. When I came you had this wonderful venue, people drinking and dancing and laughing and screaming and I said wow this is the place where I belong. What I liked about your festival that you did it without any money. But of course you don?t start a festival for money. Look at our festival, we bring people from all parts of the world and they want to tell and exchange ideas about what they are doing and the atmosphere is so important. I travel all over the world to meet people who are willing to work and have a goal in their thoughts. Otherwise life is boring. We are in the world to move ourselves and to be active.  Of course it is always about love and it is always about good food and drinks and this is a topic that matters us all, everybody love films and everybody lives in a house makes use of the public space. Architecture and film are the most influential art forms of the 20st century and it will be of the next century and the combinations of both disciplines are very important.

Daniella Huszár and Noémi Soltész, 8 October, 2011.

AFFS: The members of the collective AFFS of Chile have followed with great enthusiasm and admiration the development of the architecture film festival Rotterdam AFFR and the similar initiatives in Europe to start off this triggering event. As architects, we were interested in the discussion that was generated around these festivals and it seemed that film was an excellent platform to broaden the reflection on architecture beyond the academic and technical world of the professionals directly tied to the field. Our initial incentive, then, is to inspire a broader public to reflect on the city through film. We want everyone to realize that architecture is alive, which is part of their daily lives, and it directly affects us and influences our social relations.

The Festival will be held in 2012 October. Could you uncover some of your plans for us?

AFFS: Our programming content shares many of the same aspects as those of the festivals that take place in the world, nevertheless, we want to put a distinctive stamp on our exhibition, giving priority to content created in Latin America and Chile, providing a new space of visibility to the creators of the continent. In the medium term, we are committed to the promotion of film production that incorporates architecture as a protagonist, however, we hope that the four-day long festival will be more like a Celebration of Architecture, where the public can participate not only in the projects, but also lectures, urban tours, installations, and other activities, experiencing the city in a unique way.

What issues in architecture and urban planning fascinate people the most these days? What are the most relevant questions of this field in South America or in Chile nowadays?

AFFS: Within the general public, the most relevant discussions today in Chile and South America are related to excessive urban growth, poor integration of cities and the lack of green areas. In some groups that are more ?conscious? ? academicians and also citizens – there is concern about the issue of heritage. For example, in recent days, the construction of a giant shopping mall in the city of Castro caused great commotion in the media and social networking sites. The criticized construction is taking place in a historic part of the city, very close to 1 of the 16 Chilean churches in the World Heritage list by UNESCO. This landmark case shows that architecture can become a subject of common interest; it can receive the critical eye of the ordinary citizen, and be deconstructed by a technical, academic, and why not say, egomaniacal eye.

Julia Oravecz, March 9, 2012.