Architektur.Film.Sommer: Prefab Nostalgia

Location: courtyard of the Architekturzentrum Wien in the MuseumsQuartier Wien

Alternative bad-weather location: Az W Podium

Prefabrication as the herald of a new era. In both capitalist and communist societies an attempt was made to use prefab concrete elements to realize housing dreams, cleanly, efficiently and rapidly. “Concrete Stories“ tells about the joys and sorrows of life in the system-built housing blocks and recounts very personal histories and experiences from the world of standardised housing. Vorort traces the development of a new-build housing estate in a green setting, while “Excuse me, while I disappear“ reflects upon the – still largely unfulfilled – promises of Chinese investors in a dormitory town planned for 210 000 people in Luanda, Angola.

APPEARING SCULPTURAL | EBNIT BRIDGES

AT 2015, 11 min, no dialogue
Dir.: Marte.Marte Architekten and Andreas Waldschütz
The short film “Appearing sculptural | Ebnit Bridges” is part of a visual and acoustic series which was produced in collaboration with photographer and avant-garde film-maker Andreas Waldschütz. Here the most sculptural works by Marte.Marte Architekten are re-staged in an unusually experimental and sensuous manner. The music to the individual films is based exclusively on field recordings made on site.

VORORT

DE 2015, 8 mins, original with English subtitles
Dir.: Laura Engelhardt
In this essay film, the director examines the suburb of Bremen in which she was born, which over the course of time developed from a rural village into a collection of new-build housing estates. The film confronts the standardised buildings, their details and their placing in the surroundings with the large advertising billboards that signify wastelands or empty fields which are destined for further building projects. The film-maker reflects on the process of increasing urban sprawl and the role played by private houses and sites in responding to the wish for security and investment in the future. The focus is on the disappearance of the real and of childhood memories, on the overwhelming strength of images that seem to promise so much and on the question about how people actually live in such places.

BETON BRUT

GB 2014, 5 mins, original version
Dir: Timothy Smith
Béton brut celebrates both the fine detail and monumental scale of London’s Brutalist structures.
The film attempts to portray these structures as settings for the future (whether that be utopian or dystopian) – devoid of humans, ultimately embraced by nature. The only evidence of human involvement is in the construction – the impact on the materials and the textures that they left behind.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/94600828

EXCUSE ME, WHILE I DISAPPEAR

ZA/AO 2014, 20 mins, original with English subtitles
Dir.: Michael MacGarry
The film portrays a young municipal worker who works as a caretaker in the test-tube town Kilamba Kiaxi outside the Angolan capital, which was built by Chinese investors and construction companies. At night he has to travel the long distance back to the old-town of Luanda, where he lives. The new city, designed for more than 210,000 people, is still largely empty. A sleeping giant with no real relationship to its surroundings.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/118527584

CONCRETE STORIES

CZ 2015, 72 mins, original with English subtitles
Dir.: Lorenz Findeisen
As a way of dealing with the housing shortage in Europe from 1948 the “Plattenbau“ (system building) promised a simple and fast way of building thousands of apartments and was used widely and gladly, not only in the Soviet Union but also in the West. The entertaining film “Concrete Stories” tells the story of these prefabricated buildings on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It gives a voice to the people who erected these buildings and, above all, to those who live in them. The stories, many of them very personal, succeed in modifying the stigma often attached to the monotonous buildings, to which Shostakovich even dedicated an operetta.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/48734655