CINECITY 2015

CINECITY 2015: RISK

1X MINUTE FILMS EXPLORING ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY

http://www.thecinecityproject.com/

CINECITY 2015: RISK The Judges first choice films and Overall winner.

The CREATIVE DIRECTORS of the National Architecture Conference this year explored the “nexus between the need to take creative risks in and a world incapacitated by risk minimisation.” Donald Bates, Andrew Mackenzie, Hamish Lyon

The Conference Directors chose 4x aspects of architecture to explore this theme. In writing this year’s CINECITY brief we chose their 4th one – The discipline of architecture.

DISCIPLINE (of architecture): [noun] a method of instruction which results in a body of knowledge and informs a way of doing things.

RISK: [verb] to expose, someone or something valued, to danger, harm, or loss; [synonym] to chance.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in a piece called Live Dangerously, asks “…  what is it that compels the individual human being to fear his neighbour, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself? “

In few rare cases he suggests it’s shame but overwhelming it is a desire for comfort, inertia.

So in light of this we asked the filmmakers what is architecture – to you?

In watching the films I ask myself what is architecture to this person –  the risk here is change, perhaps and possibly, a change in definition, in the understanding of what architecture is and what it can be – a shift in the body of knowledge that informs the way we do things.

 CALLUM FRAZER First Choice:  

 Rise Atmos

CALLUM MORTON First Choice:

 The Journey Alice Covatta & Eloise Mavian

 CLAIRE HEALY First Choice: 

 Outer Urban Trancendance Nicola Morton

 ESTHER ANATOLITIS First Choice:

 The Backwash Celeste Veldze & Jack Riddle

Esther Anatolitis Highly Commended: Cake Cosette To

Esther Anatolitis Highly Commended: Inherent Duration Francis Matthews

 KASPER GULDAGER JENSEN First Choice:  

 In Flight Emily Cheng

 LOUISE LEMOINE & ILA BÊKA First Choice:

 Horsing Around RIDe

Lemoine & Beka Highly Commended: The Journey Alice Covatta & Eloise Mavian

 RICHARD GOODWIN First Choice:

 The Journey Alice Covatta & Eloise Mavian

Richard Goodwin Highly Commended: Variations on the silence of Ruins #1 Diogo Morato

Richard Goodwin Highly Commended: In Haste Margaret Frank

 SEAN CORDEIRO First Choice:  

  Horsing Around RIDe

 THE SHORTLIST OF 30x FILMS WAS PUT FORWARD TO THE PANEL OF ESTEEMED JUDGES. EACH JUDGE CHOSE AND SCORED THEIR FIRST CHOICE FILM. THE OVERALL WINNER OF THE PRIZE OF $1000 AUD GOES TO:

HORSING AROUND by RIDE

CONGRATULATIONS!!

THE CINECITY ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROJECT is curated by LOUISE MACKENZIE & SARAH BREEN LOVETT cinecity@thecinecityproject.com   If you would like to see the FILMS (or see them again) please go to our vimeo page via our website  www.thecinecityproject.com  THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS: LYONS  –  THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY  –  LOOP

 VIEW CINECITY 2015: RISK HERE

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On the 16 May 2015 an additional screening of 13 of the CINECITY 2015: RISK films was held at the Australian Institute of Architects National Architecture Conference.

The curators created for this conference screening a further short list from the CINECITY 2015 films which explored the conference theme and adhered to the Cinecity submission format.

There was an audience choice prize which was awarded to:

Taking Flight by Emily Cheng

CONGRATULATIONS! Emily

This prize was kindly provided by the Australian Institute of Architects

Please see the films which screened below:

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POSTER BY SARAH BREEN LOVETT

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1. CINECITY2015 RISK: CALL FOR FILMS
   60 second films exploring architectural ideasCINECITY Architectural Film Project invites submissions 60 secondunedited* architectural films which explore the theme: RISK: by asking the question, from your point of view, WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?**Cinecityis an architectural film project that has been running since 2009 wherefilmmakers, architects, artists, academics and members of the general publicare invited to make 60 second unedited* films exploring architectural ideas inrelation to the theme of the annual National Architecture Conference.

This year the 2015 theme of theNational Architecture Conference is RISK. The CREATIVE DIRECTORS of theConference, Donald Bates, Hamish Lyon and Andrew Mackenzie state that “The Riskconference will explore this troubled nexus; between the professional necessity to takecalculated and creative risks and a world incapacitated by riskminimisation.” Specifically, it willfocus on four aspects of risk within the profession – risks related to:cultural relevance, architectural pedagogy, professional practice and thediscipline of architecture.”

We all, if we’re lucky, live, work and play within architecture and the city; whether coming from within the discipline or outside of itwe are all constantly contributing to what architecture is, and in turn it contributes to who we are. This question falls within the discipline of architecture (the body of knowledge and a way of doing things) which in turns plays a role in creating – the architecture.

As architecture may have a kind of language – its elements being perhaps, doors, windows, wall, the sun, and wet footprints, the shine on a brass railing etc – films also have a particular language, so using the medium of film (but without editing) that is using camera angles, camera movements, figure movements, lighting, framing, colour,setting, space and time etc we ask you to consider, from your point of view, the question filmicly.

30 shortlisted films, which explore What is Architecture? and adhere tothe CINECITY submission format, will be selected by the curators and putforward to the panel of esteemed judges. Each judge will choose and score theirtop film. The overall first place prize is $1000 AUD.
JUDGES:
We areproud to announce that the Judges for CINECITY 2015 are:
CALLUMMORTON – MADA Monash University
CALLUMFRASER – Elenberg Fraser Architects
CLAIREHEALY & SEAN CORDEIRO – Artists
ESTHERANATOLITIS – Architecture & Philosophy Curator
KASPER GULDAGER JENSEN 3XNArchitects & GXN Innovation
LOUISELEMOINE & ILA BÊKA – LivingArchitectures
RICHARD GOODWIN – Artist& Architect
SCREENING:Selected films by the Curators,and Judges will be screened in Melbourne May 2015.

SUBMISSION FORMAT:
* Forinformation on submission format and how to enter go tothecinecityproject.com

DEADLINE: 25 MARCH 2015 5pm AEST
CINECITY 2015 issupported by LYONS ARCHITECTS and THEUNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Curators: Louise Mackenzie & Sarah BreenLovettcinecity@thecinecityproject.com

**RISK: [verb] to expose, someone or something valued, to danger,harm, or loss; [synonym] to chance.
**DISCIPLINE (of architecture):[noun] a method of instruction which results in a body of knowledge and informs a way of doing things.
**LIVE DANGEROUSLY “A traveller who had seen many countries and peoples and several continents was asked what human traits he had found everywhere; and he answered: men are inclined to laziness. Some will feel that he might have said with greater justice: they are all timorous. They hide behind customs and opinions. At bottom, every human being knows very wellthat he is in the world just once, as something unique, and that no accident,however strange, will throw together a second time into a unity such a curiousand diffuse plurality: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience – why? From fear of his neighbour who insists onconvention and veils himself with it. But what is it that compels the individual human being to fear hisneighbour, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself? A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In the vast majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia – in short, that inclination to laziness of which the traveller spoke. “ Friedrich Nietzsche “LiveDangerously” in ed Walter Kaufmann Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre,New American Library, New York: 1975. (Page 122)

VIEW CINECITY 2015: RISK HERE

 VIEW THE CINECITY PROJECT FILMS HERE

CINECITY 2015: RISK

1. CINECITY2015 RISK: CALL FOR FILMS
   60 second films exploring architectural ideas
   
   CINECITY Architectural Film Project invites submissions 60 secondunedited* architectural films which explore the theme: RISK: by asking the question, from your point of view, WHAT IS ARCHITECTURE?**
   
   Cinecityis an architectural film project that has been running since 2009 wherefilmmakers, architects, artists, academics and members of the general publicare invited to make 60 second unedited* films exploring architectural ideas inrelation to the theme of the annual National Architecture Conference.
   
   This year the 2015 theme of theNational Architecture Conference is RISK. The CREATIVE DIRECTORS of theConference, Donald Bates, Hamish Lyon and Andrew Mackenzie state that “The Riskconference will explore this troubled nexus; between the professional necessity to takecalculated and creative risks and a world incapacitated by riskminimisation.” Specifically, it willfocus on four aspects of risk within the profession – risks related to:cultural relevance, architectural pedagogy, professional practice and thediscipline of architecture.”
   
   We all, if we’re lucky, live, work and play within architecture and the city; whether coming from within the discipline or outside of itwe are all constantly contributing to what architecture is, and in turn it contributes to who we are. This question falls within the discipline of architecture (the body of knowledge and a way of doing things) which in turns plays a role in creating - the architecture.
   
   As architecture may have a kind of language - its elements being perhaps, doors, windows, wall, the sun, and wet footprints, the shine on a brass railing etc - films also have a particular language, so using the medium of film (but without editing) that is using camera angles, camera movements, figure movements, lighting, framing, colour,setting, space and time etc we ask you to consider, from your point of view, the question filmicly.
   
   30 shortlisted films, which explore What is Architecture? and adhere tothe CINECITY submission format, will be selected by the curators and putforward to the panel of esteemed judges. Each judge will choose and score theirtop film. The overall first place prize is $1000 AUD.
   JUDGES:
   We areproud to announce that the Judges for CINECITY 2015 are:
   CALLUMMORTON - MADA Monash University
   CALLUMFRASER - Elenberg Fraser Architects
   CLAIREHEALY & SEAN CORDEIRO - Artists
   ESTHERANATOLITIS – Architecture & Philosophy Curator
   KASPER GULDAGER JENSEN 3XNArchitects & GXN Innovation
   LOUISELEMOINE & ILA BÊKA – LivingArchitectures
   RICHARD GOODWIN – Artist& Architect
   SCREENING:Selected films by the Curators,and Judges will be screened in Melbourne May 2015.
   
   SUBMISSION FORMAT:
   * Forinformation on submission format and how to enter go tothecinecityproject.com
   
   DEADLINE: 25 MARCH 2015 5pm AEST
   CINECITY 2015 issupported by LYONS ARCHITECTS and THEUNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
   FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Curators: Louise Mackenzie & Sarah BreenLovettcinecity@thecinecityproject.com
   
   **RISK: [verb] to expose, someone or something valued, to danger,harm, or loss; [synonym] to chance.
   **DISCIPLINE (of architecture):[noun] a method of instruction which results in a body of knowledge and informs a way of doing things.
   **LIVE DANGEROUSLY “A traveller who had seen many countries and peoples and several continents was asked what human traits he had found everywhere; and he answered: men are inclined to laziness. Some will feel that he might have said with greater justice: they are all timorous. They hide behind customs and opinions. At bottom, every human being knows very wellthat he is in the world just once, as something unique, and that no accident,however strange, will throw together a second time into a unity such a curiousand diffuse plurality: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience – why? From fear of his neighbour who insists onconvention and veils himself with it. But what is it that compels the individual human being to fear hisneighbour, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself? A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In the vast majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia – in short, that inclination to laziness of which the traveller spoke. “ Friedrich Nietzsche “LiveDangerously” in ed Walter Kaufmann Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre,New American Library, New York: 1975. (Page 122)
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CINECITY 2015 RISK

CINECITY 2015: RISK! Coming Soon!

http://www.thecinecityproject.com/

THE REPRESENTATION OF ARCHITECTURE IN FILM and THE CINECITY PROJECT

THE REPRESENTATION OF ARCHITECTURE IN FILM and THE CINECITY PROJECT

By Louise Mackenzie & Sarah Breen Lovett

This article originally appeared in the Australian Insitute of Architects NSW journal Architecture Bulletin

In the Cinecity Project participants are asked to submit one minute films exploring spatial ideas. It exists in both cyber space and physical space. This year the theme is MAKING ^[1]. Over seventy films were submitted which the curators shortlisted to thirty. These 30x 1 minute films make the touring 2014 Cinecity Project. In the following text the curators, Louise Mackenzie and Sarah Breen Lovett, discuss the representation of architecture and different ways that MAKING architecture can be thought through the moving image.

The representation of architecture is often taken, it seems, for the thing itself; that is we profess to know and even to love buildings we have never been to, but we speak of them as if we have. This is the power of the image, both the representative and mental. We are able to create buildings in our minds through representative images, such as photographs and drawings. The moving image, contributes another layer of complexity to representation, continuing and extending relationships between the physical and the fictive.

The Oxford dictionary’s definition of representation suggests, that an object being represented described “in a particular way.” ^[2]  This is an instance of the real and ‘not yet’ real intersecting. That is, each particular representation adds another layer to our understanding, of the thing being described.  The moving image, itself allows for this exploration.  Typically, one might understand exploration of space/land in a colonial context, but here we can also think about it as an exploration through the time and space that the filmmaker constructs for us, in this case we’re “travel[ling] through,” ^[3] time and space, not only to experience the film but to understand something more, or different about architecture and city, in terms of our relationships to it and our experience of it.  This is taken in its broadest possible sense, to quote sociologist and film theorist Lorraine Mortimer,

“But we do not get far if we do not try to understand what we call the political, economic, cultural and the historical are intertwined with what we call the imaginary, the emotional and indeed the somatic.” ^[4]

Here Mortimer is discussing conflict between and within nation states, but this can also extend to other kinds of understanding. In understanding architecture one must necessarily, in this view consider, amongst other things the rational and irrational, the material and immaterial, the imaginary and indeed the very human body. It is this diversity of representation and understanding of MAKING architecture that The Cinecity Project produced in 2014.  This can be seen in films where various aspects of making architecture were explored, such as an interchange between building materials and the reflected image; making life; light making architecture; architecture making social constructs, and the making of cinematic architectural space.

The winning film from this years’ Cinecity Project was SOUND AND VISION by Francis Matthews. This film explores how the architectural environment is made up of layered, reflected and refracted images. How we are unconsciously embedded within, and constructed by these images, caught in a cross-fire of their existence. The intrigue of the ‘making’ of architecture in this way, is communicated in the ‘making’ of the image, where ones mind enters the representative space, but in the end one is sharply returned to the image space, and the construct of the representation.

A more personal, absent and off camera experience of architecture making life is evident in DUNWICH FISHING by Eleanor Suess. In this film, the stillness of the camera highlights the slow and timely movement of the fisherman. The lone fisher suggests contemplation. This architecture without architecture also suggests conviviality, if any fish are caught,  which set against the redundant looking wench and up turned boats points to a past industry – making a living this way is no longer sustainable, against the fished out sea. This film implies a solace and through the colours, especially, a beauty, in this life lived. The shed we see is a kind of architecture but to this film it is not as important as the architecture which remains unseen - that which is off screen where the fisher lives – the buildings and town which makes his life and memories, that which works with both a material and immaterial context.

In contrast, Sabine De Schutter, in SENSING SPACE, also uses a still camera, but with an ‘un-changing’ scene. The image appears to hum in its stillness, pregnant with potential. A representation of this kind alludes to the thick, dense experience of light in architecture, which, while transient and temporal has a heaviness. The fact that ‘nothing happens’ in Sabine’s film is the beauty of it, like architecture itself, appearing static, unchanging and un-moving conversely is full of movement imperceptible by the human eye.

Through a sea of yellow raincoats and orchestrated movement TWINNING by Lena Obergfell alludes to a more ‘active’ and socially constructed architecture.  How people and their relationships across space and time can create the experience of architecture. How the transient, temporal aspects of urban environment have just as much hand in creating our urban and architectural environment, as the bricks and mortar of its physical construction.

Using the moving camera, SPINE by Susan Chan at once shifts the representation of a ‘bridge,’ to be an image space experience for the spectator. Through camera movement spines of the bridge pass overhead, wrap around the viewer, making one simultaneously aware of the construction of the bridge, and the construction of the moving image in relation to the space of the spectator. In this way, SPINE, and many other films in The Cinecity Project: Making, are not only the representation of architecture, but the construction of architecture, through the reception of the moving image. In doing this, through these explorations, the films make new ideas, bringing new understandings.

The films can be view via: www.thecinecityproject.com

  

END NOTES

[1]The Cinecity Project is a fringe event aligned with the theme of the National Architecture Conference and in 2014 the Creative Directors theme was MAKING.

[2]Representation:

[noun] 2. The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/representation

[3]Explore:

[verb] 1Travel through (an unfamiliar area) in order to learn about it:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/explore?q=explore

[4] Lorraine Mortimer Terror and Joy: The Films of Dusan Makavejev, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2009 (Page 188).

Cinecity 2014_Eleanor Suess_Dunwich Fishing

Cinecity 2014_Francis Matthews_Sound and Vision

Cinecity 2014_Lena Obergfell_Wasteland Twinning

Cinecity 2014_Sabine De Schutter_Sensing Space

Cinecity 2014_Susanne Chan_Spine