Film Categories: Architecture

  • Babylon Series #3

    This is an architectural garden of the variably brash rock-solid liquid-encompassing, but always imitative, human mind as it processes the given light thoughtfully. This film is about that.

  • private patch of blue, a

    “I have breathed you in and there are no words to exorcise you from my soul.” – Eleanor Crow “An auto-portrait of maternity, ‘private patch’ shows Toronto filmer Tracy German quietly expectant, keening through winterludes of surprise before the birth of her first child. Episodically structured and materially assured, German’s exacting observational sense re-creates her domestic surround from the point of view of her boy-to-be, lurking over woodpiles and rock with eyes wide in wonder, turning the surrounding bush into a softly focused pastel glaze. “Deftly intercutting interiors and exteriors, ‘private’ opens on a wintry porch, a liminal architectural space…

  • Rattle

    The film is, at once, a document of a great Canadian multinational facing perilous agricultural “sophistication,” and a lament – a witness to the element of ruin that plagues industry. The Massey Harris King Street Factory (Toronto) was built in 1879 to a chorus of consternation. The size and scope were unprecedented in Canada at that time, and it established this company (later to be Massey Ferguson) as a major manufacturing firm in the agricultural industry. The film is a journey through the remnants of the factory which, for years, served as the pillar of the corporation. Seen from afar,…

  • Aerial View

    A young Halifax architect withdraws from a promising partnership after experiencing events that lead him to question the ethics of his profession. This radical shift in Geoff’s career becomes increasingly isolating. His wife leaves him, while his best friend compromises their earlier ideals. Geoff must now rely on his own personal strength as he begins to construct a small home for himself in the country. “It is a film of simplicity and sincerity. It is also a perfect example of a young ‘Maritime’ cinema which has more to say, and says it better, than the big Toronto-Montreal ‘money movies.’” –…

  • Self Portrait (by H. Gayer)

    “Self Portrait” is a pixillated film that takes the filmmaker’s head on a whirlwind tour. In ten short minutes the background changes from waves and woods to Eastern mosaics, Indian architecture, and European monuments, while the figure of the head alters its appearance. A soaring soundtrack employs pan-global elements as well, including samples of Balinese and Tibetan chants, Inuit throat singers, and various choirs. The film illustrates oppositions between natural and man-made environments, the monumental and the ordinary, as well as history and timelessess. Underlying all this is a concern with spirituality and morality that gives this personal film a…

  • Skin Flick

    As a textual surface, skin becomes the privileged vehicle for the representation of history. A site from which culture defines spatial concepts of containment and exclusion, the marked skin is the point of entry for an analysis of institutions, economic processes and ethical systems. A metaphor for external boundaries, the tattoo traces an architectural system of social discipline applicable to prisons, factories, schools, warehouses: all the places that operate on principles of isolation and surveillance.

  • Solar Frontier, The

    A film about solar-heated houses in the snowbelt – their cost, performance, and technology – as told by the architects and people who live in them. The film demonstrates that solar energy is a feasible alternative now, not next year or in the next century.

  • Big Adventure, The

    “The Big Adventure” is a mind-boggling subway ride that can best be described as a daily commuter’s dream come true. The time-lapse photography film was shot on Toronto’s University subway line. The ride starts at the top (Wilson) and races to the bottom (Union) at a simulated speed of 350 miles per hour! Although it appears to be one continuous run, the film is actually a compilation of seven trips down the line shot between 2:00 and 9:00 o’clock in the evening.

  • Toronto Summit

    Photographed during the convening of the G7 leaders in Toronto, Kneller’s materialist documentary pits street activists against the forces of law and order. This inner-city portrait shows a metropolis battened down for possible conflict – its streets closed and cordoned off while helicopters circle overhead in perpetual surveillance. As the film proceeds through dialectical montage, the two sides gather: the black shirts from windowed enclaves, and the protesters who gather to sing, dance and make speeches. Finally, open conflict breaks out, as the barricades fall and both sides clash in order to lay claim again to streets too easily ceded…

  • Tremors

    Tall buildings and cars are photographed using the Kinemacolor process (employing colour filters and a water lens). Sturdiness jousts with fragility, past with present, alienation with tenderness, abrasiveness with sensuality, red with green. The camera is moving in the slick of space. Shapes vibrate selectively from the image; others flash as vibrations vary in rhythm and intensity.