CINECITY 2013_ARCHIVE

CINECITY 2013 ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROJECT BRIEF 2013:

In a fringe event aligned with the theme of the 2013 Australian Institute of Architects National Conference Material we invite submissions of 60 second films 

exploring the architectural relationships between the material and immaterial, between the real and imaginary, between an idea and building. 

Selected films are to be screened at Federation Square on 31st May at 6.30pm. Submissions may specifically draw inspiration from one of the 

international or national speakers at this year’s conference, or Judges for this competition.

FORMAT:

Continuous shot of 60 seconds maximum (ie no editing)                                 

Handheld cameras to be used

Digital cameras eg: telephone cameras allowed                              

No introduced props

No post production vision                                                                           

No technical effects

No titles or credits (on the film itself)                                                                     

16:9  Aspect Ratio (1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720)

MP4/M4V/H.264 max 100MB for vimeo upload                                

Content must be equivalent for G or PG rating.

UPLOAD YOUR SUBMISSIONS:  To our Vimeo site:

Titled:  "Cinecity 2013_Title of Film_Your Name"  

Include:  A 100 word description of film, & 100 word biography of yourself.

Make The 'thumbnail' or 'still' of your film a 16:9 landscape image in TIFF or JPG with your best image from the film. 

This will be used in Federation Square to promote the screening event if your film is selected.

Deadline:  5pm EST 30th April 2013.

Shortlisted films for screening will then be contacted, and asked to email ftp higher res version of the film by 14th May 2013. 

Selected films for screening will be revealed on the screening event 31.05.12

If you do not have a Vimeo account you will need to make one to be able to upload your film to vimeo. By uploading yourfilms to the cinecity vimeo page you give permission for the film to be used in the Cinecity Architectural Film Project, in any promotions, screening and documentation of the event.  The intellectual property remains with the film maker.

JUDGES:

We are proud to announce the following esteemed judges will be making their specific selection for the films to bescreened.

Bernard Tschumi Architect (New York)

Michael Tawa Academic (Sydney)

Shelley Penn National President Australian Institute of Architects

Jane Rendell Academic (London)

Eduardo Kairuz Architect & Filmmaker (Melbourne)

Ricarda Vidal Academic + Betting on Shorts (London)

Richard Sowada Head of Film Programs ACMI (Melbourne)

The judges decision is final and further discussion will not be entered into. The judging criteria is based on the technical parameters laid out in the brief and thematic engagement with the subject "material/immaterial" aligned with one of the speakers in the national conference or Judges of the Architectural Film Project.

cinecity architectural film project

http://cinecityarchitecturalfilmproject.blogspot.com.au/

Judges Top Picks

BERNARD TSCHUMI
1. Pete Gomes: Path 1
2. ShMoJo: 57 Spring Street
3. Amanda Clarke: A Drifting Up
Commendation: Lindsay Sawyer : The City is the People
Commendation: Eva Marosy-Weide : Untitled

EDUARDO KAIRUZ
1. Amanda Clarke: A Drifting Up
2. Lindsay Sawyer: The City is the People
3. Reuben Nanda: Cognitive Dissonance in Space

JANE RENDELL
1. Amanda Morgan: Impermanence no 9
2. Eva Marosy Weide: Untitled
Joint 3. Lindsay Sawyer: The City is the People
Joint 3. Rupert Owen: Wifly Dovecote

MICHAEL TAWA
1.R.O. : Inland
2.Sabine de Schutter : Rim
3. ShMoJo : 57 Spring Street

RICHARD SOWADA
1. Amanda Morgan: Impermanence #9
2. Alex Chomicz: Glass Ceiling
3. Lindsay Sawyer: The City is People

RICARDA VIDAL
1. Amanda Clark: A Drifting Up
2. Alex Chomicz: Dreaming of Immateriality
3. ShMojo: 57 Spring Street
Commendation: Alex Chomicz : Glass Ceiling

SHELLEY PENN
1. ShMoJo : 57 Spring Street
2. Alex Chomicz : Dreaming of Immateriality
3. Farzane Haghighi : City through the Moving Glass

CINECITY SHORTLIST (Selected by Sarah + Louise)

Sundial: Ryhs Jenkins & Frazer Macfarlane

Gate: Fugitive Images

Francis Matthews, Stephen Mulhall & Paul Quinn: Ghost Estate

Roberto Arce: The Other Language

Cyrille Lallement: Tecture

Mathew Hynam: Cincinnati Jump Cut

John Gatip, Ale Cordova, Andy Ukhtomsky, Tim Joe Mak: The Immaterial Transcript

Diogo Morato: Parking the Wind

Hanna Lewi: 1946

Richard Goodwin: Mystic Alien Departure

Mark McQuilten: Frosty

“The submission requirements were brilliant in their precision and yet allowed for some very successful and imaginative works both in content and in filmic concepts.” 

Architect  
Bernard Tschumi

“The Cinecity Architectural Film Project has been a wonderful and playful opportunity for architects to explore and express their ideas about architecture through film.  In the constrained format of 60 unedited seconds, it has both invited and tested entrants to exercise their capacity for innovation and vision, with some outstanding results.” 

President of the AIA  
Shelley Penn 

“We are very excited to have the Cinecity Architectural Film Project screening during the 2013 National Architecture Conference. Like cinema, the design process for architecture requires us to lure our clients in to 'the suspension of disbelief.' Built form, for all it's material qualities, relies heavily on visual effects and atmosphere, perhaps this is why French filmmaker and writer Rene Clair once noted 'The art that is closest to cinema is architecture.' We look forward to seeing the outputs of artists, architects and film makers that will suspend our disbelief on what material in architecture might mean." 

Directors of National Architecture Conference 2013 

Sandra Kaji-O’Grady & John de Manincor

CINECITY ARCHITECTURAL FILM PROJECT
VIEW FILMS HERE: CINECITY FILM ARCHIVE ON VIMEO

http://www.thecinecityproject.com/

http://cinecityarchitecturalfilmproject.blogspot.com.au/

The Carlton New Wave

Over the next month our Australian Perspectives’ mini-season The Carlton New Wave brings to you a series of avant-garde films made right here in Melbourne’s inner-city. Guest blogger and co-curator Louise MacKenzie explains why these films from the ’60s and ’70s are so significant to the revival of the Australian film industry.
http://blog.acmi.net.au/index.php/2013/08/the-carlton-new-wave/  

In the 1960s and ‘70s there was body of films being made in Carlton that film critic and curator Bruce Hodsdon suggests were the seeds of the Australian film revival. The French New Wave influenced these Carlton films, which similarly tell the story of individuals within a specific place.

Exploring the experience of the city within a rapidly changing cultural context, the films offer the opportunity to reflect on the tumultuous ‘60s and ‘70s, informing us of who we are and the interconnections between culture and place.

Telling our own stories is essential, which is what characterised the films and made them important. National Sound and Film Archive historian Graham Shirley states that in the early 1960s “…the feature industry [in Australia] had flickered to the point of extinction…” [1]. At this time the films being shown in mainstream cinemas where overwhelmingly English or American.

With this underground movement in Carlton, we began to relate our own experiences again on film. The Carlton films, while never commercially successful, contributed to the renaissance of Australian filmmaking and culture. Many of those involved went on to work in the commercial sector and perhaps most important, the films began to free up ideas.

Phillip Adams [2] notes that by the 1960s Australian culture had “atrophied” and had been like this for the last half century (61).  He titles a chapter about the re-birth of the commercial Australian Cinema, “The Cultural Revolution”.  Up until then anyone who wanted to do anything culturally or intellectually interesting went to London.[3] According to filmmaker Nigel Buesst, “… Melbourne in the sixties was … a fairly boring city … we wanted to make films that might change that”. [4]

Brian Hodsdon, in discussing the French national cinema, writes that the New Wave films “Mark[ed] the advent of a new modernism into mainstream film narrative, the French New Wave challenged a national cinema aesthetically and re-jigged it structurally”[5].

Despite borrowing these aesthetics and structures from the French New Wave, the Carlton films remained uniquely Australian. By exploring inner-city life in Melbourne, the stories revealed the experience of navigating stifling conservatism and new ways of thinking and being.

While there was immense interaction between the filmmakers – interchanging roles as director, actor and editor on each others films – the cultural activity wasn’t confined to filmmaking. Carlton theatre groups and the staff and students at Melbourne University were also frequently involved.George Tibbits represents this cross-cultural pollination. Aside from acting in Brian Davies’s The Pudding Thieves, he’s also a composer, architect and academic.

Many of those involved on the films were also at La Mama and The Pram Factory including Sue Ingleton, Graham Blundell, Peter Cummins, Jack Hibbard, to name a few. The Melbourne Uni Film Society funded many of the films and there was an interactivity between the Architecture Student Films made at the time and the Carlton group.

Brian Hodsdon calls this movement the Carlton Ripple, which I like – to a point. The French New Wave dwarfs these dozen or so films in an international context, but in a Melbourne or Australian context, without being nationalistic, these films started to tell our stories again. Though not everyone’s experience was related, because the film presented an outsider’s underground view, the Carlton New Wave helped initiate something we still experience today. Apart from being culturally significant, the Carlton Films also constitute a magnific filmic experience.

Perhaps their legacy illustrates why shoe-string, underground films should be given funding support?

[1] In the Australian Cinema: “Chapter 1 Australian cinema: 1896 to the Renaissance” Graham Shirely

[2] There was a film group in Sydney formed in the mid ‘60s called Ubu Film; this group tended to make experimental films while the Carlton group where more narrative based (Brian Hodsdon).

[3] In the Australian Cinema: “Chapter 3 The Cultural Revolution” Phillip Adams

[4] Carlton + Godard = Cinema: An Interview with Nigel Buesst by Jake Wilson

[5] The Carlton Ripple and the Australian Film Revival by Bruce Hodsdon

ACMI Blog_CARLTON NEW WAVE FILMS

ACMI Blog_THE CARLTON NEW WAVE

CINECITY RE:SCREEING UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE HOSTED BY THE PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS 23 AUGUST 2013

CINECITY RE:SCREEING UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE HOSTED BY THE PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS 23 AUGUST 2013

CINECITY RE:SCREEING UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE HOSTED BY THE PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS 23 AUGUST 2013

DISCUSSION PANELISTS:
AMANDA KERLEY (CHAIR)
DAVID NICHOLS
EDUARDO KAIRUZ
AMANDA MORGAN 
JACQUI ALEXANDER

THE CARLTON NEW WAVE @ ACMI co-curated Louise Mackenzie

http://www.acmi.net.au/oz_carlton_new_wave_part_one.aspx
http://www.acmi.net.au/oz_carlton_new_wave_part_two.aspx

THE CINECITY PROJECT _ 2013 "JUDGES TOP PICKS"

 THE CINECITY PROJECT _ 2013 

"JUDGES TOP PICKS"

 Follow the Link

http://www.cinecityarchitecturalfilmproject.blogspot.com.au/

CINECITY PROJECT 2013_Federation Square Melbourne Australia

CINECITY PROJECT 2013
view films here:
CINECITY ON VIMEO

NEW ARCHITECTS MELBOURNE_FILM & ARCHITECTURE

PARIS 2008
http://www.newarchitects.com.au/

CINECITY_2013

CINECITY INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL

FILM COMPETITION 2013

2013_Co-curators Sarah Breen Lovett & Louise Mackenzie

The CINECITY workshops have been run collaboratively in Melbourne & Sydney by architects and film makers. The participants make one minute films exploring spatial ideas.

 The CINECITY workshop &; exhibitions were established in 2009 by Louise Mackenzie, Romaine Logere, Russell Bywater, & Foo Chi Sung (Fooch) director - squint/opera/australia

Further Info for 2013:

http://cinecityarchitecturalfilmproject.blogspot.com.au/search/label/HOME 

CINECITY_2011

CINECITY 2011 Exhibition and Panel Discussion

Australian Institute of Architects National Conference: Natural Artifice

Exhibition

14 April to 16 April 2011

Panel discussion

16 April 2011 @ 1.10pm Room 112

Juhani Pallasmaa

Michael Tawa (University of Sydney)

Richard Sawada (ACMI)

Des Smith (Deakin University)

Fooch (Squint Opera)

Daniel Flood, Sam Slicer (Flood & Slicer)

Chair: Sarah Breen Lovett (University of Sydney).

With thanks:

the Panellist, the Guest Crits, Louise Mackenzie,

Russell Bywater,

Sarah Breen Lovett, Seung Hyuk Choi & Janet Renehan

VIEW THE PANEL DISCUSSION:

http://vimeo.com/groups/cinecity/videos/23196398

 

VIEW FILMS HERE:

http://vimeo.com/groups/cinecity/page:2/sort:date

CINECITY _2010

 

view films here:

http://vimeo.com/user4679079/videos

2010 CINECITY POSTER BY ELIZABETH

CINECITY_2009



view  films here:

http://vimeo.com/user4679079/videos


2009 CINECITY POSTER BY ELIZABETH

"IT'S A KENNEDY": Melbourne, the Cinema and the work of Chris Kennedy.

Architect Victoria Spring 2008

Australian Institute of Architects

Victorian chapter

“It’s a Kennedy”: Melbourne, the Cinema and the work of Chris Kennedy.

Culture and place are intertwined in ways that don’t make them easy to separate, especially in terms of our experience of them. If we look at the cinema we see this subject constantly addressed.  We’ll also see that there is a constant exchange between our stories and those stories we see reflected on the screen.

Chris Kennedy is a production designer, who over the last twenty years, has worked on many Australian films, including GHOSTS…OF THE CIVIL DEAD (1988), DEATH IN BRUNSWICK (1989), SPOTSWOOD (1992), STIFF (2004) and THE BRUSH OFF (2004), all of which were set in Melbourne.  In these films we see images of Melbourne that we are familiar with. The representations of place connect us to the film and the films back to us. This happens through the cityscapes,  and also in the rooms, pictured in these films, which show the way(s) we live. David MacDougall in his book TRANSCULUTRAL CINEMA writes that, “tacit knowledge” is that knowledge which,

“…we can not “tell” in the abstract; it is knowledge we can only convey by showing – by expressing our relation to it in a manner that allows others to enter into a similar relation to it”(29).

It may be that the descriptions of place contribute towards defining place for us in that the choices made for locations and sets created - the spaces and places created by the production designer, in some way distils Melbourne for us.  Perhaps they “pick out” the quintessential bits of Sydney Road, (in STIFF) for example, that we readily recognize as Sydney Road – and by doing this it defines what it is about Sydney Road – that makes it Sydney Road  - and by us recognizing it, makes us (in some way) a part of it.

GHOSTS…OF THE CILVIL DEAD  is not for the most part set in Melbourne. The film is slow and menacing.  It’s set in a prison (out in country).  Nick Cave in an interview, on the DVD for the film, says that the main character in the film is the prison itself. The set that Chris Kennedy created in this film results in an environment that is extremely oppressive: for the prisoners and the guards alike.  The film ends at Parliament Station connecting it directly (and terrifyingly) back to us. (It’s our story too.)  This is one of the points the creators of this film are making - you can’t lock people away in harsh environments without involving the whole society.  This closing scene is very effective use of place in storytelling. The film makers suggest through the use of space (in part at least), that the desperate nature within the prison is deliberately created, by those in control, those who remain unseen: those who own the prison and the government who legislates: the people responsible for the creation of this, particular space.

“It’s a Kennedy” is a line from THE BRUSH OFF (filmed for the most part in and around Melbourne’s - arts precinct). The “Kennedy” they are referring to is – a work of art, a sculptural piece, in the gallery, with in the film, (which is actually ACCA).   It is funny in part because, not only this piece but the whole film is a Kennedy. By referring to the work in this way links what is going on in the film to the world out side the film. It has the same effect that MacDougall discusses in regard to the last shot, , in the film  THE 400 BLOWS which is a freeze frame of the main character. He writes, “In calling attention to a reality outside the narrative, Truffaut [the director] refers us from the character back to actor who plays his part” (32). In calling our attention to the production designer it calls our attention also, to the world out the film, in our case, Melbourne. Perhaps what these films and other films like them do is to play a role in each of us “discovering” our own “portraits” of Melbourne. In their book MELBOURNE: A PORTRAIT (1960), Mark Strizic, photographer and David Saunders wrote,

Each [wo]man has in his[her] heart.

His[Her] own portrait of his[her] city;

To discover this portrait is revealing,

For his[her] city has made him[her] while [s]he made his[her] city.

Works Cited

Clarke, John. Stiff, 2004.

Hillcoat, John. Ghosts…Of the Civil Dead, 1988.

Joffe, Mark. Spotswood 1992.

MacDougall, David. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998: 25 – 60.

Neill, Sam. The Brush Off, 2004.

Ruane, John. Death in Brunswick, 1991.

Strizic, Mark  and Saunders, David. Melbourne A Portrait. Melbourne: Georgian House, 1960.

LOUISE MACKENZIE_COPYRIGHT_2008

ARCHITECTURE, FILM & MUSIC: ACMI Mediatheque Project 2012

ACMI Mediatheque Project 2012

Australian Institute of Architects _ MAA

I curated the following program for MAA 2012:

Architecture, Film & Music: Carlton in the Sixties [Framed by Now]

A film program at the Mediatheque in ACMI

The selection of films in this program is centred on the artistic community of Carlton in 1960s and 1970s. These films implicitly explore ideas about the inner city and suburbia and what these different urban arrangements mean in terms of enabling a community interaction. These films are important because they gives us the opportunity to look back to the 1960s and 70s at what the urban environment offered and the cultural changes that were happening at this time. The films tell us something about who we are and the interconnections between culture and the urban fabric.

The three Carlton films have been influenced by the French New Wave and like the New Wave films tend to these films also tell the story of an individual or individuals within a place. Together these films ask questions about the suburb and the city. How we live in these spaces - what the architecture enables?

The Carlton films are framed by two more recent films. One exploring the idea of the image and the virtual being a more dominant experience of the city; the other suggests the design of some spaces within the present city is so dismal that it actively discourages people coming together.

In this inter-disciplinary exploration we ask did the urban fabric of Carlton support the artistic community in the 1960s and 70s or could it have happened anywhere?

Mapping a City of Fragments v.2 (1997) Dir: Chip Lord 9.31

Mapping a City of Fragments v.2 begins with a clip from Alphaville (1966) by Jean Luc Godard. In Alphaville, a futuristic Paris, the city is run by a computer - Alpha 60. The computer controls everything in this thoroughly technological world.

Chip Lord’s film is a montage of fiction films and clips taken by the director of various cities around the world. These clips are intercut with images of Silicon Valley. The film suggests we no longer enter a city through physical (architectural) gates. The point of entry now is the image.

Pudding Thieves (1966) Dir: Brian Davies 53.48

Pudding Thieves stars George Tibbits and Bill Morgan – George & Bill attempt to make a living through pornographic photography.  This film explores questions about the shock, mores and feminism of a changing modern city. It’s dedicated to the Bug House – sadly neglected today.

Bonjour Balwin (1972) Dir: Nigel Busset 1.05

Bonjour Balwin is a film, in part, about a man who runs a magazine. In the film we see a similar image of the city to one Robin Boyd uses in his book “The Australian Ugliness”, which in turn is one of the topics for a magazine article under discussion in the film – the characters discuss the development of a point system for the most dreadful town in Victoria.

Boyd’s book in part asks us questions about who we are. In this light it’s important to look back at these films because they do tell us something about who we are, what we might have in common, and how our architecture shapes us and the way we live.

Nimmo Street (1962) Dir: Tom Cowan 11.10

Nimmo Street is about a girl, a boy, a fight and Middle Park in 1962.

Expectant Spaces (2002) Dir: Ben Speth 32.35

Expectant Spaces is a montage of various empty places, waiting for someone to arrive. These spaces are reflective of the images of Silicon Valley seen in the first film. This film asks question about the ways architecture enables or doesn’t enable people to come together.

Louise Mackenzie_copyright_2012

Photography by Jane McDougall

 

THE SHAPE & FORM OF HOME [MELBOURNE & BEYOND] ACMI _ Mediatheque Project 2011

Australian Institute of Architects_ MA|A (National Architecture Week)_(Film and Architecture Group:CINESCAPES w Delia Teschendorff & Helen Stutton _ www.deliateschendorff.com.au)

For MAA 2011 I curated the following program:              

ACMI _  Mediatheque Project 2011

The Shape & Form of Home [Melbourne + Beyond]

The theme of this year’s MA|A (National Architecture Week) is “home”, in terms of architecture and the city what could this mean? Helen Gibson wrote, almost 10 years ago, that she thought the problem with urban planning and design in Australia was that it did not engage with the people who are indented to live in these, proposed, spaces.

In what ways does the form of the city shape our experience of home? What is home _ are we referring to the central city of Melbourne or the house where we live? Perhaps both - the two being intertwined and interconnected, what shapes and forms will Melbourne take? -  will we continue to sprawl or densify? -  how else could we live?

How do you live? What do you want your home, at an architectural and urban scale, to be like?

The following films tell different ways of how we have lived and do live in Melbourne and other places - perhaps we can take all our experiences and ideas to suggest how we might live. What shapes and forms do we want Melbourne [home] to be? And how do we want to live in theses spaces?

Helen Gibson “Planning and Communicating to Achieve Sustainable Strategies” in Take 1: Urban Solutions: Propositions for the Future Australian City, Editors Michael  Keniger, Geoffrey London, Carey Lyon Ian McDougall Stuart Niven, Peter Williams, The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Canberra, 2002.

HOME (2007) 2.25 Zephlyn Neilsen

this film asks is it physical or something intangible?

OLYMPIC GAMES, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA 1956 (1956/1999) 9.41 Straford Brothers

filmed during the games and edited in late ‘90s the film takes us back and also connects us to a more recent Melbourne – collectively linking us all through images of central Melbourne (& Sport!). The Pool, by architects McIntyre, Boland, Murphy & Murphy, has a starting role - the images of which are beautiful.

A PLACE TO LIVE A PLACE TO LIVE (1972) 10.43 Aust. Gov.

describes to migrants the housing options in Melbourne & Australia in the early 1970s.

WORLD TO CONQUER (1952) 6.06 Frank & John Straford

takes us to a suburban home with backyard in the 1950s – it brilliantly references classic Hollywood and the silent tradition and it is an outer space experience.

NARRAPUMELAP (1974/2007) 3.42 Gracemary Cumming & Grace MacGugan

describes the experience of a home – in between states – an almost empty house with strong experienciential memories.

TRIPOLI, MELBOURNE, ME! (2007) 2:07 Dania Dabliz

describes, two homes, Dania Dabliz tell us what it is to emigrate for her, she also talks about city shapes – density & sprawl – and the experience of these city types.

FROGGIE (2001) 12.22  Joan Robinson

describes and shows the importance of place lived and how types of living change over time – the young girls in the share house are a new addition to Brunswick, not so much seen in the 1950s.

MARVELOUS MELBOURNE 1910 (various)

this film takes us all back to a place - 1910 only 75 years, since white settlement (1935) – at the beginning of the gold rush era - in the 1850s - people would have held in living memory a “Melbourne” as home that figured differently, and not in an insignificant way, these experiences of home should also be considered in any proposals we have, in looking presently and forward, for Melbourne as home.

Louise Mackenzie_copyright_2011