| October 19, 2017
ADFF:NY is two weeks away. Tickets are on sale now! We have an inspiring list of films including four world premieres, six US premieres and two NY premieres. There will be many industry leaders speaking at the festival including Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks — co-founders of MASS Design — who will be there on Friday for the world premiere of Made in Ilima. Kevin Roche will be at a Q&A on Saturday for the US premiere of Kevin Roche: A Quite Architect. Cathleen McGuigan from Architectural Record and Nicolai Ouroussoff will have a conversation after the Friday night screening of REM.
Visit the new ADFF Lounge!
This year the ADFF festival lounge includes permanent additions to the Cinépolis Chelsea. The beautiful and durable flooring is by Bolon, the LED bulbs and programmable lighting system are by Ketra and the custom digital wallcovering is produced by Wolf Gordon. We want to thank Primo Orpilla and his firm Studio O+A who designed the custom wallcovering and flooring, and were also a great partner in upgrading the ADFF lounge.
The living room setup and chairs for VR viewing are supplied by Suite NY, the beds are from Hastens and the office furniture for the Phaidon pop-up book store are supplied by Humanscale. The Ultra-Short Throw SXRD 4K Home Theater Projectors are from Sony, the virtual reality experiences are by ScenicVR, and Cosentino has used their Dekton material to create the bar top that our favorite meadery - Honey's in Bushwick - is using for the festival bar.
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| Selected films from this year's ADFF NY programs |
| | Made in Ilima Director: Thatcher Bean
2017 / 65 min / USA – World Premiere
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| In the center of Equateur Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ilima community remains one of the most isolated in the world. They have coexisted with endangered wildlife in their surrounding forest for generations, but as the pace of development has increased, this fragile ecosystem has suffered. They partnered with the African Wildlife Foundation and the architecture firm, MASS Design Group in 2012 to create a new conservation-focused primary school and community center. This film documents the collective building process aimed at leveraging local craft and ecological knowledge towards education, preservation and beauty.
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| Director: Mark Noonan
2017 / 81 min / Ireland – US Premiere
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| Still working at age 95, Pritzker Prize-winning, Irish-American
architect Kevin Roche is an enigma. He’s reached the top of his profession, but
has little interest in celebrity and eschews the label “Starchitect”. Despite a
lifetime of acclaimed work that includes the Ford Foundation, Oakland Museum of
California and 40 years designing new galleries for the Metropolitan Museum in
New York, he has no intention of ever retiring and keeps looking forward.
Roche's architectural philosophy focuses on creating “a community for a modern
society” and he has been credited with creating green buildings before they became
part of the public consciousness. |
| Director: Tomas Koolhaas
2016 / 75 min / USA
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Architecture is usually filmed from the outside, as an inanimate object. The few depictions of interiors are usually limited to still or static images of an empty building, reducing it to no more than an icon or sculpture. REM, the documentary by Rem Koolhaas's son Tomas, uses an unconventional approach by combining the human stories and experience of both the architect and the users of his architecture. The film explores Rem’s life, working methods, philosophy and internal landscape, from a never-seen perspective of intimacy and immediacy. The result is having the feeling of being ‘inside’ his head. This perspective allows the viewer to understand Rem’s ideas in a way they couldn’t otherwise. These ideas are not merely explained as intellectual concepts but the viewer also sees these ideas in practice - the reality on the ground. They see how these ideas come to fruition in concrete and metal. The film shows how these structures, some massive and some small - dotted all around the globe - affect every aspect of the lives of the people that build them, use them and live inside them.
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| Columbus
Director: Kogonada
2017 / 100 min / USA
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| Columbus is the first feature-length fiction film screened by ADFF.
With its naturalistic rhythms, its focus on architecture and empathy for the complexities of families, debut director Kogonada's Columbus unfolds as a gently drifting, deeply absorbing conversation. With strong supporting turns from Parker Posey, Rory Culkin and Michelle Forbes, Columbus is also a showcase for the director's striking eye for the way physical space can affect emotions.
When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin (John Cho) finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana - a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernist buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library. As their intimacy develops, Jin and Casey explore both the town and their conflicted emotions: Jin's estranged relationship with his father, and Casey's reluctance to leave Columbus and her mother.
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| SUPERDESIGN
Director: Francesca Molteni
2017 / 62 min / Italy – World Premiere
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| SUPERDESIGN is a film about the Italian Radical Movement in architecture and design in the 1960’s and 70’s. Through the words and stories of people who were part of that movement, we retrace the history and the heritage of the movement. They take us back to that time when everything seemed possible.
The mid-1960s represented a revolutionary time when the need for change has spread everywhere in the Western world and has pervaded all the aspects of life. Some beautiful archival historical images recreate the atmosphere of the period. It was a time of ‘positive turbulence’ also on an artistic level. And even today, we can definitely catch a glimpse of these radical views.
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| Dries
Director: Reiner Holzemer
2017 / 90 min / Belgium & Germany – NY Premiere
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| | For the first time, fashion designer Dries Van Noten allows a
filmmaker to accompany him in his creative process and rich home life. For an
entire year Reiner Holzemer documents the precise steps that Dries takes to
conceive of four collections - the rich fabrics, embroidery and prints
exclusive to his designs - as well as the emblematic fashion shows that bring
his collections to the world and have become cult “must sees” at Paris Fashion
Week. This film offers an insight into the life, mind and creative heart
of a master fashion designer who, for more than 25 years, has remained
independent in a landscape of fashion consolidation and globalization.
Original music by Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, and Matthew Herbert and
Sam Petts-Davies. |
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