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The 2020 edition figures:

Living Together Again - Architecture Short Film Competition

The competition was a success both for the number and the quality of the submissions:

  • Almost 300 short films submitted for the competition
  • 20 semi finalist short films have been selected and featured in two locations for five days
  • 5 finalist short films have been featured at the Marinaressa Gardens
  • Over 1000 people attended to the projections
As the project grows we expect more submissions in the future and we plan to create different sections to showcase more quality works.

 

Spotlight on Bêka & Lemoine

The Festival featured every day five different films by the internationally acclaimed film makers Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine:

  • Koolhaas Houselife
  • Barbicania
  • Infinite Happiness
  • Homo Urbanus Shanghaianus
  • Moriyama-San
With the screening of some of their works, at VASFF we explored the relation between spaces, architecture and people. Through their unusual narration, the revolutionary language redifinig architectural documentaries and by portraying the daily life at some of the most iconic buildings and sites, we discovered the real life of a few of the most significant places and valued the social aspect of living and inhabiting the spaces.

 

Spotlight on Bêka & Lemoine

The Festival featured every day five different films by the internationally acclaimed film makers Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine:

  • Koolhaas Houselife
  • Barbicania
  • Infinite Happiness
  • Homo Urbanus Shanghaianus
  • Moriyama-San
With the screening of some of their works, at VASFF we explored the relation between spaces, architecture and people. Through their unusual narration, the revolutionary language redifinig architectural documentaries and by portraying the daily life at some of the most iconic buildings and sites, we discovered the real life of a few of the most significant places and valued the social aspect of living and inhabiting the spaces.

 

Out of Competition

The Venice Architecture Short Film Festival presents the Out of Competition section featuring:

Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival
Director: Alessandra Galletta
lagalla23.com

Two Pianos
Director: Paul Clemence and Axel Stasny
paulclemence.com | axelstasny.com

Planet Netherlands
8 short videos promoted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy, produced in collaboration with The Architecture Player and curated by Marco Brizzi.
architectureplayer.com | Marco Brizzi
Francesca Feder, Louise Lemoine, Tony Zanon and Ila Beka at the Marinaressa Gardens
Directors, producers, film makers and journalists spent time netweorking together and enjoying sunsets at the Marinaressa Garden, before the projection.
On the occasion of the festival professionals from the archiecture field as well as from the cinema sphere could meet, share ideas and new projects.
We are planning to have a dedicated schedule for meetings and project buildings.

Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine

Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine presenting their Moriyama-San film at the Marinaressa Garden.
Moriyama-San film trailer. Check Bêka & Lemoine website

Director Stefano Santamato,  Paolo Soravia - The Blink Fish - producer & Anastasia Kucherova - Stefano Boeri Architetti, receive the first prize

The 2020 award goes to Le Troiane, by Stefano Santamato. Watch the trailer below.

Troiane

The short film directed by Stefano Santamato and produced by Paolo Soravia - The Blink Fish for Stefano Boeri Architetti, is awarded as winner of Living Together Again Competition.

Troiane

The short film directed by Stefano Santamato and produced by Paolo Soravia - The Blink Fish for Stefano Boeri Architetti, is awarded as winner of Living Together Again Competition.
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The Finalist Short Films

The Jury selected 5 best cinematographic works dedicated to contemporary architecture, hereby presented.
The Competition Jury was composed by:
  • Marco Burrascano – Professor, Università Roma 3
  • Viviana Carlet – Director, Lago Film Festival
  • Francesca Feder – Producer
  • Alessandra Galletta – Director and producer
  • Nicola Picco – President of Venice Architects Association Foundation
The short film with the title "Troiane" directed by Stefano Santamato and produced by Paolo Soravia - The Blink Fish for Stefano Boeri Architetti, is awared as winner of the 2020 Venice Architecture Short Film Festival.

Troiane

Competition Winner

In one single night, in October 2018, rain and wind tore down 14 million trees, transforming a lush mountain landscape in northern Italy into an apocalyptic ground, with environmental consequences that will affect life in the area for many a decades to come. In Carnia, one of the worst hit areas, 400 of those trunks were retrieved, and from there travelled to Syracuse, opposite end of Italy, where on theGreek theater stage they gained a last role, as mute witnesses of both tragedies.The film tells their journey as if through their own eyes, along 1500 Km and across a variety of landscapes, colors and sounds.

Duration: 00:16:14

Written & directed by Stefano Santamato
Producer: Paolo Soravia - The Blink Fish
Distribution: Premiere Film
Music: Vasiliki Anastasiou
A project by Stefano Boeri Architetti

Ferragosto

Second Selected Film

Ferragosto is a short film on architecture and urban development taking place in Noumea (New-Caledonia). Driven by the word of Italo Calvino and the music of the movie Il Sorpasso, we journey through the empty streets and the seventies buildings of this tropical capital. Just like the ferragosto, the city is emptied but this time, it's because of the vote for the independence of our pacific island.

Duration: 00:03:05 By Alexandre Erre

Liquid City

Liquid City

Third Selected Film

Liquid City is a love letter to the process and products of thoughtful intervention in the built-environment, as well as to the city, people, and larger context in which we work, live, play and operate. Every process or structure we create is temporary, evolving and refining infinitely over time. Liquid City is a meditation on architecture as an examination of, and response to, contemporary culture, as well as a celebration of the liquidity of new ideas and approaches to design and construction, and the maddening challenges, shifting trends and requirements, and inspiring opportunities that drive us to create.The film looks beyond the finished product and takes a more contemplative look at the details; interacting with the process and elements that make up the whole which we so often overlook. In this way, the film offers a rare and much-needed glimpse into the soul, not just of a building, but of the architect.

Duration: 00:16:00 By Christian Williams, Brian Cassin

Ode to LA

Fourth Selected Film

Where the microcosm meets the macrocosm ... In this video poem, I explore the repercussions of the external COVID-19 epidemic on peoples' private worlds in London, UK in the form of video recordings of one particular subject. In parallel, the hypnotic beat of this video art piece commemorates the amalgam of disparate memories, which I associate with every area of the eclectic city of Los Angeles. Ultimately, dance is a medium for liberating myself from the chains of attachment, nostalgia and existential angst. The vibrant fragments of absurd details of the LA celebrate the notion of visual pleasure from a female perspective as explored in Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual and Other Pleasures", 'In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.' The haunting circular rhythmic and visual structure of this piece likewise pays homage to the theory of Écriture féminine, whereby memory is re-enacted in a fragmented, repetitive and disjointed fashion in line with my everyday stream-of-consciousness process rather than linear, phallocentric fashion in an attempt to my own voice in the realm of video art. As stated by the Écriture féminine theorist, Hélène Cixous in her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa", 'I, too, overflow; ... my body knows unheard-of songs.' For more information, visit: imdb.com

Duration: 00:07:28 By Katya Kan

Adana: On The Bridge

Fifth Selected Film

Çatalan Bridge was established in the same period with Çatalan Dam, which was constructed to meet the drinking water needs of Adana, with the purpose of transporting the water provided from the dam. It was Turkey’s longest bridge in 2002 and over the years the bridge has become a public space that people cannot live without. The documentary that seeks for the place of the bridge in daily life, the people's practices of using the bridge and their thoughts about the city, in times when individual life practices are dominant, asks by referring to the heterogeneous structure of the bridge that divides the society horizontally: Do bridges bring people together, just as they connect the two pieces of land?

Duration: 00:12:59 By Necati Öz

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The Semi-Finalist Short Films

In this dedicated section some additional information on the selected short films of the Venice Architecture Short Film Festival 2020 are presented. These films were screened during the five days of the festival at the Chiostro di San Francesco della Vigna and at Padiglione Venezia at the Giardini della Biennale.

At the Cutting Edge

In the south of India, among tropical trees and with the creatures of the forest, the biggest utopian community of the world grows: Auroville. Within the border of this magical place, Treehousecommunity - an association founded by Philipp Klingspies - gives birth to sustainable treehouses, made mostly with wood and bamboo. In december 2018, some students from Delhi reached Auroville to rebuild with a group of aurovillian the treehouse n. 58, called “the fortress”.

Duration: 00:15:00 By Filippo Tolentino

Oblivious

A walk through the unconscious: a world where realities decompose and recompose. Memories find their place among other memories. In refuge, in quarantine, in solitude, our mind may create new realities of places that used to be spaces of human encounter. We percive them now as non-places, walking alone in a nebulous emptiness. Could we ever relive this places again? Will these times affect the way we used to live together?

Duration: 00:02:27 By Alessia Rapetti, Tommaso Polli, Alexandra Galer, Janosch Kirchherr.

Cogs

The reality of life in the city is that much of our lives become personified by getting from A to B. An escalator, an intersection and an anonymous stretch of highway - all uninspired mechanisms by which we traverse through and across the city. But in isolation these cogs become something else...

Duration: 00:03:45 By Oliver Poppert

First Turn on the Left

Jalel gets lost in the street in which he has seen the light.
A paradox filled with a loss that hasn't stopped growing over the years.

Duration: 00:09:10 By Jhimi Wajdi

In Assenza

Duration: 00:08:48 By OAPPC Como

also check second and third part on Vimeo:

Secondo Quadro Luce

Terzo Quadro Epifania

Jugaad

How are the challenges posed by the city structure in Mumbai met by its dwellers’ ability to innovate and adapt?
‘Jugaad’ is a Hindi word roughly translated as an innovative fix or an efficient solution that bends the rules. It represents a flexible approach towards cohabitation that is inseparable from the daily lives of Mumbaikars.
With the absent of commentary and constant dialogue, this film invites the audience to experience the multi-layered cohabitation -- each group actively creates a space for themselves and generates their personal daily ritual when navigating through Mumbai.

Duration: 00:07:49 By Chak Hin Leung

Lionheart

LionHeart is a poet and a spoken word performer. Over time, and working closely with architects and those who inhabit their buildings, his research and his work has explored Architecture & Poetry's relationship around emotional inhabitance, and its connection to memory and mental health in the city.In this short film, a collaboration with architectural film maker Jim Stephenson, LionHeart discusses his route into architecture and poetry and the power of architecture to heal, with a focus on his own 'safe place', The Barbican in London.LionHearts' words are intertwined with a performance of his poem "The Absence of Light", written for Lisa Martinez.

Duration: 00:05:00 By Jim Stephenson

Partenopea

A legend tells that Naples was founded on the remains of one of Ulisse's sirens: Parthenope. And what if Parthenope had never died? Through the alleys of the city centre, chatting with people, i set off in search of her traces; traces of feminine spirit.

Duration: 00:08:01 By Stratos Cotugno

Piazza Giardino

This garden square is the result of the requalification of an abandoned green area, located in a suburban area of Garbagnate Milanese. Aim of the project was to generate a new centrality by maintaining the existing trees and integrating them into a design that combines the image of the garden and the idea of the square.The slate flooring is organized in bands with irregular width, marked by curbs in white cement that also have the function of conveying rainwater.In this grid, green and paved areas, urban furnishing, children playgrounds and the white cement lighting system are organized in a coherent and recognizable design.The result is a place where the background geometry and the irregular pattern of the trees overlap, where the exclusive designed lighting systems emphasize the natural elements.The park was designed with a principle of flexibility, which includes the presence of fixed elements (concrete curbs, furniture and lighting system) that remains fixed, while green and paved areas can be changed according to needs.Particular attention was paid to the theme of park accessibility, including all the playgrounds that can also be used by children with disabilities.

Duration: 00:04:20 By Alberto Danelli

So Da Dusseldorf

In all the darkness there is some light – a shortdocumentary on the complex of public space, habitat and public art.

Duration: 00:03:00 By Kuesti Fraun

Symphony of the Body

In the modern architecture of Central Station in Rotterdam, two Mediterranean men front the cold efficiency of this industrial area. The building seems impenetrable for the vulnerable desire to meet a stranger. Till their shadow breaks through a light dome and they become aware of each other’s desire. Can a body, with the softness of dance and music, break the incantation of steel and stone?

Duration: 00:15:00 By Kino Rebelde

The House That Built Tsoghik

Film "The house that built Tsoghik" is a story about woman-architecture Tsoghik Arabyan, who worked in 1950-th in Armenia.

Duration: 00:15:00 By Mariam Ohanyan

Venice Architecture Film Festival