Film Festival
Bauhaus @ Architecture+Design Film Festival Winnipeg
Co-presented with the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Now in its ninth year, the Architecture + Design Film Festival presents critically acclaimed films focusing on the importance of architecture and design in everyday life. The films cover a range of design-oriented topics from architecture and urban design to graphics and product design. ADFF is the only festival in Canada devoted solely to architecture and design and this year's edition features the following German films:
"Lotte am Bauhaus" by Gregor Schnitzler, starring Alicia von Rittberg (2019, Germany, 105 min)
Available on demand Sept 16-20
A delightful and powerfully moving film that champions the struggle of women in the life of the Bauhaus school. Lotte, the film’s lead character, a composite of several Bauhaus women (but primarily Alma Siedhoff-Buscher) is portrayed as a gifted carpenter and architect. Forced to weave when she’d rather build, Lotte insists and persists, besting the school’s founding director, Walter Gropius. The movie poignantly captures the conflict of liberty and oppression that characterized Germany in the ’20s and ’30s.
"The New Bauhaus" by Alysa Nahmias (2019, USA, 85 min)
Available on demand Sept 16-20
An odyssey through the life and legacy of László Moholy-Nagy, the innovative artist and educator whose pioneering approach to integrating technology into design continues to influence and inspire. In Chicago, The New Bauhaus evolved from its origins at the German Bauhaus into an extraordinary flowering of interdisciplinary design pedagogy premised on the notion that ‘the whole field of contemporary architecture and design must be based upon an indivisible unification of formerly separated and independent fields.’ Following recent retrospectives of Moholy’s work at major museums, this film offers a more accessible and intimate, emotional journey through Moholy’s life and his work as an artist, designer, visionary, and teacher.
"Of Vineyards and Shoeboxes" by Günter Atteln (2019, Germany, 58 minutes)
Fri, Sep 18 / 9 pm CDT. Also available on demand Sept 16-20
Concert halls are extremely special spaces. The physical parameters such as reverberation time, direct sound or initial reflections have to be adjusted in such a way that the hall itself becomes an instrument with which the musicians play. There are two schools of thought for the design: the “shoebox” and the “vineyard.” The first is a solution practiced since feudalism, in which a rectangular hall extends between the stage and the royal box. The second was conceived by the Berlin architect Hans Scharoun, who wanted the Berliner Philharmonie to provide a more “democratic” art experience, with the orchestra sitting in the middle and the rows of spectators rising around the stage like vineyards.
Filmmaker Günter Atteln travels some of the most important concert halls. Together with acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota and conductor Valery Gergiev, he visits the shell of the new Philharmonie in Moscow, he observes Jürgen Reinhold’s efforts to optimize sound in the venerable Scala in Milan, and Martijn Vercammen shows him the “reverberation gallery” in the lavishly renovated Staatsoper in Berlin.
"Women of the Bauhaus" by Susanne Radelhof (2019, Germany, 45 min)
Available on demand Sept 16-20
Followed by a panel discussion chaired by Alison Gillmor, with Lisa Landrum, Department of Architecture, University of Manitoba, and Marieke Gruwel, Winnipeg Architecture Foundation.
Home of the avant-garde and the foundation of modern architecture, the Bauhaus school was founded 100 years ago and its masters continue to be the stars of the architecture and design history. But the (his)story of the Bauhaus remains male-dominated. Its female contributors are largely unknown, even though much of the credit for the school’s innovative potential belongs to women. The documentary “Bauhausfrauen” is an homage to the forgotten women of Bauhaus.
Part of the Goethe-Institut focus on Bauhaus100
Details
Winnipeg, Manitoba