Architektur.Film.Sommer: From Academy to Autonomy

Location: courtyard of the Architekturzentrum Wien in the MuseumsQuartier Wien

Alternative bad-weather location: Az W Podium

Self-empowerment through self-build is the theme of this festival evening. The films cover an area that extends from the “Microbrigadas”, a kind of settler movement in Cuba in the 1970s, to Christoph Schlingensief’s opera village in Burkina Faso, and from Diébédo Francis Kéré to Kadri Batusha, the individual who takes over the role that the state fails to play in Kosovo, redefines housing construction and in the process builds a castle.

Guests: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger, Tino Glimmann, Jan Gollob

INSTITUTE ABOVE-GROUND

DE/CU 2015, 22 minS, Original with English subtitles
Dir.: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger, Florian Zeyfang
Institute Above-Ground is a documentary film about one of the early, euphoric building experiments made directly after the Cuban revolution. The architecture of Vittorio Garatti’s “Instituto téchnologico de suelos y fertilizantes André Voisin” has a futuristic feel to it. Walkways hovering above the landscape connect buildings that only touch the ground at certain places. The complex was designed for 2000 students, who, lived, worked, slept and ate there. It was later transformed into a military prison and now stands empty. The ruin lies like a stranded spaceship in the flatlands near Güines, an ark for ideas yet to be realized.
Trailer: http://www.florian-zeyfang.de/institute-above-ground/movie/

SENSING SPACES: ARCHITECTURE RE-IMAGINED; DIÉBÉDO FRANCIS KÉRÉ

GB 2014, 8 mins, English original version
Dir.: Candida Richardson
Made for the exhibition Sensing Spaces: Architecture Re-Imagined at the Royal Academy in London where Kéré was invited to create an installation. His idea for the project referenced the new primary school in his home village of Gando, Burkina Faso. His buildings are made using low-tech sustainable techniques enabling the participation of the whole community. Kéré describes the use of traditional architecture within the village compound and goes on to explain the functionality of the school building through effective ventilation and the use of bricks made from local clay.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/108768560

MICROBRIGADES – VARIATIONS OF A STORY

DE/CU 2013, 31 mins, original with English subtitles
Dir: Florian Zeyfang, Alexander Schmoeger, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet
Building troops made up of layperson known as “Microbrigadas” were set up around 1971 in Cuba in response to the housing shortage. Groups of workers were released from their duties for periods of time to erect their won housing blocks in a self-build process. The apartments in these blocks were then allocated to the workers. Up until 1975 this system was used to erect between 18,000 and 20,000 apartments annually in Cuba, until the programme was finally dropped due to shortage of construction materials. In brief fragments the film follows the changing and contradictory histories of the construction brigades and provides independent pictorial space for two large housing developments in Havanna – San Agustín und Alamar. Architecture shots, archive material and interviews are combined to form an experimental collage about this phenomenon of a revolutionary modernism.
Trailer: http://www.florian-zeyfang.de/microbrigades-variations/movie/

BATUSHAS HAUS

CH/KO 2015, 68 mins, original with English subtitles
Dir.: Tino Glimmann & Jan Gollob
Kadri Batusha has been building his house in the outskirts of Prishtina in Kosovo for 15 years; without any plans, architects or building permits. The architecture of this enormous building, with all its little towers, stairs and mazy corridors is a manifestation of his biography: A life story shaped by political activism, prison, the years as an asylum seeker in Switzerland but also by the war in Kosovo. The movie takes the viewer on a «guided tour» through the house, gives a voice to the Batusha family, some of the more than 300 inhabitants of the house. All of them shine a light on another facet of this man and his biography, all of them are necessary to understand this unique building, its architecture, and what led to it.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/98656150

Thanks to:

Embassy of Switzerland in Austria