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HouseLife is an exceptional experience of full immersion in the daily life of one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture of recent years - The House in Bordeaux, designed in 1998 by Rem Koolhaas/OMA.Unlike most movies about architecture, this feature focuses less on explaining the building, its structure and its virtuosity than on letting the viewer enter into the invisible bubble of the daily intimacy of an architectural icon.Like any house, the House in Bordeaux is a place of plurality with all its chaos, its wear and tear and its changes.

The work of Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine offers us a portrait of the real and changing vitality of one of those monuments that we believe are immortal. This realized through the stories and daily chores of Guadalupe Acedo, the home’s caretaker and housekeeper, and the other people who look after the building. Following and interacting with Guadalupe, blooms an unusual and unpredictable look at the spaces and structure of the building.A real experiment that presents a new way of looking at architecture and broadens the field of it’s representation. Koolhaas Houselife website

City of Dreams

Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

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Asmara is situated in the Eritrean highlands over 2 kilometers above sea level. The city has the rare distinction of having one of the largest surviving collections of Modernist architecture in Africa and possibly the world.These buildings date back to the late 1930s and early 1949s, a period which can be considered the height of the Modernist movement in Asmara. What makes Asmara unique is the fact that some 400 of the Modernist buildings from that period have miraculously survived decades of military conflict.

However Asmara’s unique city center may become a victim to the degenerative effects of poverty and time.City of Dreams is a thoughtful documentary about the Eritrean capital of Asmara in East Africa. It showcases the city’s stunning art deco and Futuristic structures built by Italian colonizers in the 1930’s. City of Dreams explores the ambiguities of the city’s architectural legacy, though treasured by its inhabitants, also holds bitter memories of racial segregation that are recalled through personal testimonies.In the brief period, roughly between 1925 and 1941, Italians architects experimented with new Modernist idioms which were largely influenced in part by developments in the International Style. In City of Dreams, architect Naigzy Gebremedhin tours his beloved city visiting a number of buildings that exemplify the various Modernist styles of the Italian colonial period. www.eyelevelproductions.com/CityofDreamsBroadband.htm