Architectural Film Fest: Call For Entries

I’m incredibly excited to announce that Materials & Applications and BLDGBLOG have teamed up to curate an architectural film fest, as part of this year’s Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles. In fact, we’re putting together a ton of interesting stuff; I’ll be making more announcements here on BLDGBLOG soon.
But part of our little sub-festival will be an entire evening full of short architectural films – so we thought we’d put out a general call to anyone with a film of their own that they might want to see screened for the adoring, semi-famous, and well-tanned crowds of southern California.
The obvious caveat is that your film has to be about architecture, landscape, and/or the built environment – or, at least, it has to involve architecture, landscape, and/or the built environment, and in a way that isn’t just backdrop.
Even more specifically, we’d love to show a whole bunch of architectural machinima, site animations, project fly-throughs, or other cinematic spaces, such as the short films generated annually by the Bartlett School of Architecture’s Unit 15. (International submissions are encouraged).
Need more ideas? Then check out cinematic urbanism; stop by the glass avenues of Paris 2054; or watch one of these two films. If that’s not enough, consider reading this article by Jonathan Glancey, in which he claims that:

What is fascinating, and very much an area for further research, is the close relationship between radical architectural design and the cinema. Much of the best of modern architecture, combining digital and three-dimensional design processes, is cinematic in scope and feeling.

Of course – though Glancey doesn’t explicitly state this – many of the most exhilirating films to watch are architecural in both structure and reference, whether this means Die Hard or Stalker or even David Fincher’s Panic Room – or Aliens, Tativille, and The City of Lost Children, for that matter.

[Image: From Christian Volckman’s architecturally awesome Renaissance].

Less abstractly, perhaps you’ve just recorded a video interview with an architect or urban planner – and it’s actually interesting – or you’ve just driven around Manhattan fifty times, filming each circuit, speeding the whole thing up till it’s less than three minutes… Or whatever: we just want films about architecture, landscape, and/or the built environment. There’s a whole lot of leeway there.
Your film has to be at least a minute long – though it can consist of multiple, smaller films, edited together – and no longer than ten minutes. It also has to be good.
Finally, to be included, your film has to be submitted either to BLDGBLOG or to Materials & Applications before Friday, April 6th, 2007. Include your name; your affiliation, if you have one; the title of your film; its running length; and a short description of the actual film. We’ll then go through all the submissions and choose the ones that will be featured at the festival (specific date, time, and location to be announced shortly).
Pending further developments, eligible formats for submission include Region 1 DVDs (email me for my address, or just ship it to Materials & Applications) or files sent via services like YouSendIt and MegaUpload.
So get cracking! Who knows who will see your film. This time next year, you could be directing X-Men 4 and flipping the bird at all the kids you went to architecture school with…

14 thoughts on “Architectural Film Fest: Call For Entries”

  1. Think about buying my eye-opening, efficacious, avant-garde novel, thus, receiving enlightenment from inner self how to proceed in this lifelong demise (with 24/7 sadonic satir, of course). Alleluia!! I’m now a full-fledged-Loser!! I’m very proud to giveth unto thee my own version of Loserdom. If you’ll follow to my URL…

  2. Thanks, Ben! Some good ideas there.

    And Ruairi, that’s awesome – saves me loads of time, and I appreciate the help! Any chance you’ll be in LA in May…?

  3. Hi,
    I am an architect working with some well known French architects (Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc…), in order to illustrate and animate their projects. On my website http://www.bartproject.com, some videos. I would be interested in sending some material to the festival.
    Ignazio

    Ignazio

  4. We are currently working on a documentary about students going through their architectural thesis process.
    http://www.architorturefilm.com
    We are interested in submitting a short introducing the community to our concept. We hope to increase future outreach and inspire profession/academic reaction through pre-production collaboration.
    Please let us know if this falls within your guidelines for the architectural film festival?
    We would love the chance to participate!

  5. We’re paying attention. Where should we send the video to be included for the architectural film fest? Yes, you are a genius.

  6. what should be the specs (dimension, format, quality) for the movie clip if it is submitted online for you to download? for example, is 640×480 quicktime h.264 acceptable for you to judge the clip, with a dvd submission later if it is selected for the festival?

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