BFI's architecture season starts this Friday, featuring classic films and series of film talks over the next month

The British Film Institute is hosting an architecture and film season to mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of the RIBA.

The season, which runs from 30 October to 29 November, will feature a wide range of films, from vintage Hollywood studio fare to European auteur classics.

Among the highlights is The Fountainhead (1948), perhaps the most famous depiction of an architect – one whose Le Corbusier-like vision is of a future where skyscrapers rule.

Other classics include Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), with its evocation of the modern metropolis; Paul Strand’s poetic Manhattan (1921); and Jacques Tati’s comic fable Playtime (1967); as well as Orson Welles’s dark masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

There will also be a series of film talks by speakers including Jaime Lerner, Claudio Silvestrin and Eric Parry.

The complete programme at BFI Southbank is as follows:

  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans dir. F.W. Murnau, USA (1927) 95 mins
  • Citizen Kane, dir. Orson Welles, USA (1941), 119 mins
  • The Fountainhead dir. King Vidor, USA (1948) 112 mins
  • L’Eclisse dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy (1962) 125 mins
  • Playtime dir. Jacques Tati, France (1967) 152 mins
  • Model Shop dir. Jacques Demy, USA (1968) 95 mins
  • The Belly of an Architect dir. Peter Greenaway, UK (1987) 123 mins
  • Los Angeles Plays Itself, dir. Thom Andersen, USA (2003) 169 mins
  • Sketches of Frank Gehry dir. Sydney Pollack, USA (2005) 83 mins
  • + Manhattan, dirs. Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand, USA (1921) 7 mins
  • A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, dir. Giovanni Vaz del Bello Brazil (2006) 52 mins
  • + Twelve Views of Kensal House, UK dir. Peter Wyeth (1984) 55 mins
  • My Winnipeg dir. Guy Maddin, Canada (2008) 80 mins
  • + The Fugitive Futurist: A Q-Riosity by “Q”, UK (1924) 10 mins
  • Of Time and the City dir. Terence Davies, UK (2008) 72 mins
  • + Proud City: Plan for London, dir. Ralph Keene, UK (1946) 26 mins
  • Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House dir. H.C. Potter, USA (1948) 93 mins
  • + Architectural Millinery dir. Sidney Peterson, USA (1954)

Postscript

Of Dreams and Cities – Architecture and Film will be shown at BFI Southbank and in the BFI Mediatheques at BFI Southbank, QUAD in Derby and the new Cambridge Central Library.

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