Architecture And Design Film Festival To Launch

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 26, 2011 8:45PM

It is of course fitting that Chicago is the first stop for the Architecture and Design Film Festival after a successful run in New York City last fall. Billed as the first of its kind in the United States, the festival showcases 39 films along panels and book signings from its base at the Gene Siskel Film Center May 5-9. As the brainchild of Kyle Bergman, formerly the producer of a play about Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House and Phillip Johnson's Glass House, kicks off with a special screening at Wright auction house of a film about the same subject by artist and filmmaker Sarah Morris. Points on a Line explores the Plano, Illinois and New Canaan, Connecticut icons of modernism by way of the context in which they were created and now reside, meditating on the upkeep and maintenance of the structures and the complicated roles played by structures that were always much more than houses.

The films, ranging from 2 minutes to 93 minutes, have been broken up into 15 different roughly 90-minute programs. Other titles that caught our eye include Studio Gang Architects: Aqua Tower, a 27 minute documentary about Chicago architect Jeanne Gang and her studio's most celebrated building in the context of "giving the epithet 'Chicago School' a new meaning," and Eric Bricker's quite entertaining Visual Acoustics about the renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who probably took some of the best photos of places you wish you were living. Or maybe that's just us. In advance the festival proper gets underway next month, the Festival is collaborating with the Graham Foundation tonight to present short films followed by a discussion with filmmaker Jim Venturi, but the free event is already at capacity.

The Architecture and Design Film Festival takes place May 5-9 at the Gene Siskel Film Center.