Architecture on Film: Living in the City of Tomorrow / Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers + Q&A with Deyan Sudjic and Marian Engel
Tues 29 May 2012 7pm
Leben in the Stadt von Morgen, courtesy of Marian Engel
Leben in the Stadt von Morgen, courtesy of Marian Engel
Leben in the Stadt von Morgen, courtesy of Marian Engel
Leben in the Stadt von Morgen, courtesy of Marian Engel
Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers
Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers
Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers
Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers
The Architecture on Film series returns in May, this time in response to the Barbican Art Gallery’s major Bauhaus: Art as Life exhibition. This screening, introduced by Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum, will host the UK premiere of the documentary Leben in der Stadt von Morgen [Living in the City of Tomorrow] – an observational look at Berlin’s post-WW2 Modernist Hansaviertel district on the edge of the Tiergarten – plus a Q&A with its director, and Hansaviertel resident himself, Marian Engel. Leben in der Stadt… will be accompanied by an archival propagandist film from Hitler’s right-hand architect, Albert Speer, to complete the evening’s exploration of the changing relationship between Modernism and power.
Leben in
der Stadt von Morgen (Living in the City of Tomorrow)
UK Premiere
50 years following the construction of Hansaviertel (a modernist housing enclave on the edge of the Tiergarten) through the iconic Interbau Exhibition, this film documents the daily reality of life in the ‘city of tomorrow,’ through subtle observation and conversation with its residents. In Hansaviertel, the Bauhaus’s architectural promise could be seen to have been manipulated as a pawn in Berlin’s Cold War topology – West Berlin’s politicised ‘best practice’ response to East Berlin’s rapid social housing expansion and Stalin Alle, featuring buildings by Walter Gropius, Oscar Niemeyer, Alvar Aalto and more. But can, and has, Modernism’s promise held out against its own instrumentalisation by the state, and changing contemporary urban conditions?
In German with English
Subtitles
Germany 2007, Dir. Marian Engel, 96 mins
Die Bauten Adolf Hitlers
A propagandist short from Hitler’s master architect, Die Bauten opens with a derisive jazz-scored shot of the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, before moving on to glorify the Third Reich’s greatest architectural hits – from Munich’s Haus der Deutsche Kunst to Berlin’s Olympic Stadium – all created in the five years since the Bauhaus had been closed down by the Nazi party. An important illustration of the ideologies latent in all design, and these ideas’ potential for manipulation.
In German
Germany 1938, Dir. Albert Speer, 17 mins
Venue
Cinema 1, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Tickets
Standard: £8.50 online (£10.50 otherwise)
AF Members: £7.50 online (£8.50 otherwise)
Concessions: £7.50
Online:
barbican.org.uk
Tel (9am-8pm):
+44 (0)20 7638 8891