Film Evening: The Gruen Effect – Victor Gruen and the Shopping Mall

Welcome address: Karoline Mayer, Az W

Film screening:

‘San Francisco Park(ing) Day 2009’, USA 2009, 4 min (John Hamilton)
‘Der Gruen Effekt – Victor Gruen und die Shopping Mall’, A 2009, 55 min (Anette Baldauf, Katharina Weingartner), in German

Discussion following the film:

Gudrun Hausegger, architecture historian and freelance journalist
Christian Knapp, Kohlmayr Lutter Knapp
Marlene Rutzendorfer, movies in wonderland
Katharina Weingartner, director ‘Der Gruen Effekt – Victor Gruen und die Shopping Mall’
moderated by: Andrea Seidling, architect and film essayist

The European architecture platform wonderland has initiated an international festival of films for 2012 about architecture and public space. The programme includes short films and feature films, works of fiction and documentaries in public spaces around Vienna, Budapest and Linz. The focus of the film evening at the Az W is ‘Der Gruen Effekt’, a film that engages with the life and work of the ‘father’ of the shoppng mall, the Vienna-born architect Victor Gruen.