Concrete Matters

21.07 Orientation

Stereo (David Cronenberg, 1969, 65')

PlayTime (Jacques Tati, 1967, 155')

At first glance, these films have little in common. Yet both begin with people learning how to inhabit unfamiliar environments. One observes the controlled spaces of scientific research; the other the polished surfaces of post-war modernity. Together they ask how buildings teach us where to stand, when to move and how to belong.

22.07 Moving Through

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, 99')

THX 1138 (George Lucas, 88')

Godard and Lucas imagine cities built from repetition. Corridors, tunnels and anonymous interiors dissolve any stable sense of place, while movement itself becomes a way of understanding architecture. Concrete is experienced less as an object than as a continuous system to pass through.

23.07 Archives

Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978, 113')

Thesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996, 125')

A hospital and a university appear to serve different purposes, yet both depend upon carefully organised spaces where people, images and information circulate. These films uncover the physical structures behind knowledge, suggesting that architecture is never separate from the institutions it contains.

24.07 Sight lines

Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006, 113')

The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1996, 113')

Separated by three decades, both films ask what it means to observe from a distance. Tower blocks, windows, streets and recording devices create new relationships between proximity and separation, while cinema reflects on its own position as an instrument of looking.

25.07 Ordinary Ground

Time Out (Laurent Cantet, 2001, 134')

The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962, 119')

One film unfolds inside a recognisable contemporary landscape; the other transforms offices and corridors into something almost unreal. Together they suggest that architecture is most powerful when it ceases to draw attention to itself, becoming part of the ordinary conditions of everyday life.