16.08.2010
Piano + Metropolis
This thursday night at the Rotterdamse Open Air Cinema: the screening of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with live music
18.06.2010
Cinematic Rotterdam
Floris Paalman, programmeur van de Rotterdam Classics, promoveert dinsdag 22 juni op ‘Cinematic Rotterdam, the times and tides of a modern city’. Read more »
16.05.2010
Film + architectuur in Den Bosch
On May 17 onward there will be several interesting screenings in the Verkadefabriek in Den Bosch concerning architecture. This monday it’s Many words for modern of Jord den Hollander, a film screened at the 2007 edition of our AFFR festival.
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09.05.2010
Shopping malls on film
The Barbican in London organises screenings of architecture films on a regular basis. Read more »
28.04.2010
Rotterdam premiere
Living Architectures of Beka & Lemoine has its Dutch premiere on Thursday April 29, the filmmakers will be present at the screening. Make your reservation now at the NAi.
08.03.2010
The opportunity to build
Screening of ‘an opportunity to build’ (1985) by Rob Klaasman and Maarten Kloos.
06.02.2010
The Complete Metropolis
Only 200 meters missing, as the newspaper announced. In 2008 the only (almost) complete reel of Fritz Langs’ Metropolis was found. Friday Febrary 12 live on Arte TV. Read more »
02.02.2010
Oscar nomination for Logorama
Yes, we recognize the beauties, because the short animation film Logorama we screened at our festival is nominated for an Academy Award! We keep our fingers crossed for the people of H5, especially Nicolas Schmerkin.
Infinite Space
The Architecture of John Lautner
by Jan-Richard Kikkert
The houses designed by American architect John Lautner (1911-1994) are more famous than himself. Because most of his spectacular and photogenic homes are located in the heart of the American Film industry his designs play an important part in famous movies. The Chemosphere (Malin) is referred to as one of the central characters in Brian De Palma’s Body Double. Who does not remember how Sean Connery is taken care of by Bambi and Thumper in the Elrod house, or how Mel Gibson pulls the Garcia House from the mountain slope with his pick-up truck. And of course the Dude who ends up unconscious with his face on the glass table in the home of Jackie Treehorn. Because the shot was taken from under the table, the fantastic roof of the Sheats-Goldstein residence is seen with its hundreds embedded drinking glasses that create a starry sky.
This was the first Lautner design I saw with my own eyes, together with my wife Christine in December 2005. Owner James Goldstein told us to come an hour before sunset to see the James Turrell pavilion in the garden at its best. How is it that these sort of clients do not live in the Netherlands? Love for progressive architecture and money apparently do not mix here.
The house was much better than the already very spectacular pictures suggested. This visit led to a fanatical quest with Tycho Saariste to trace every work and to visit all ninety-nine remaining houses. This goal is almost completed: there are two left after many hours of internet and extensive archival research and five trips. Each design exceeded the wildest expectations. Even the houses Lautner only briefly mentions in his monograph published in 1994, were still wonders of space and inventiveness.
The next time I met Goldstein was after the opening of the first major Lautner exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in July 2008. Rumor had it that he was given a house tour for other Lautner homeowners. Luckily I still had his mobile number in my phone. We ended up with Goldstein at the couch where El Duderino (his Dudeness, the Duder) drank his White Russian.
The exhibition consisted of hundreds of original drawings that were shown in a way that everyone could study them quietly. Because it is difficult even for a trained eye to imagine the complexity of Lautner’s work from a drawing or a photo, they had decided to make huge models of five key works. Film footage was shown in the background. The compilation of these short films supplemented with recordings of several other houses, interviews with key figures and unique historical materials has become the film Infinite Space.
The European premiere of Infinite Space, The Architecture of John Lautner (Murray Grigor, 2009) is Friday, October 30th at the AFFR2009. Jan-Richard Kikkert is architect-owner of Architectenbureau K2 in Amsterdam.
Date: 27.10.2009
Tags: westcoast modernism
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19.06.2010
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29.10.2009
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23.10.2009
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