Bird's Nest - Herzog & de Meuron in China

Bitter Sweet Ballad

2025

This is a story about youth with music. It all happens at the Dandelion School, Beijing’s first middle school specifically established for the children of migrant workers. Every year when new pupils arrive, Ms. Yuan Xiaoyan, who has worked in the school choir for eight years, would choose a group of music-loving first-years with solid musical foundations to join the choir. A new group of children join the choir while those who have advanced to the second year have to discuss with their families their future choices. For choir members, their music career in middle school will eventually stop due to the pressure of high school entrance examinations and the inevitable parting. But along this journey accompanied by music, they have been savoring the joys and sorrows of their youth, burying them deep in their hearts, and transforming them into growth-promoting nutrients.

Eiffel's Race to the Top

2023 · ★ 7.3

Behind the iconic Eiffel Tower lies the story of an incredible challenge to erect a thousand-foot tower that went far beyond a design competition, and marked a major turning point in engineering history. It was the beginning of radical transformation where iron was pitted against stone, engineering against architecture, and modern design against ancients. Press campaigns, lobbying, public conferences, denigration of opposing projects, bragging about big names - all participants engaged in a fierce battle without concession. Using 3D recreations, official sources (reports, letters, drawings...) and intimate archives obtained from their descendants, this film will bring to life this vertical race through a fresh and visual way to mark the centenary of Eiffel death.

Inside Red China

1958 · ★ 8

October 1st, 1957. Dusk descends on Tiananmen Square, Peking. Fireworks crackle light across the night sky, above a city alive with National Day festivities and celebrations. Two intrepid New Zealand film-makers - Rudall and Ramai Te Miha Hayward - are there, documenting the life and times of communist China. The distinction of being the first English speaking foreigners to film unfettered in communist China was significant. The invitation to visit China was facilitated through the New Zealand China Friendship Society. They filmed in Canton, Shanghai, Peking (Beijing) and Wuhan. It was a small window of opportunity for Westerners to gaze on a country that was largely a mystery to the outside world since 1949. The unfortunate irony was that two of the documentaries; “Wonders of China”, and “Inside Red China”, were considered to be communist propaganda, and were not distributed outside of New Zealand.

Tadao Ando

1988

Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.

Kevin Roche – The Quiet Architect

2017 · ★ 6.5

Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect is a feature documentary film that considers many of the key architectural questions through the 70 year career of Pritzker Prize winning Irish-American architect Kevin Roche, including the relationship between architects and the public they serve. Still working at age 94, Kevin Roche is an enigma, a man with no interest in fame who refuses retirement and continually looks to the future regardless of age. Roche's architectural philosophy is that 'the responsibility of the modern architect is to create a community for a modern society' and has emphasised the importance for peoples well-being to bring nature into the buildings they inhabit. We consider the application of this philosophy in acclaimed buildings such as the Ford Foundation, Oakland Museum and at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for whom Kevin Roche was their principal architect for over 40 years.

Under Tomorrow's Sky

2021

Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV architects, always has 100 projects going at once. Documentary filmmaker Jan Louter followed him for two years to make "Under Tomorrow's Sky", a candid and open-hearted look at the highs and lows of the architecture profession.

Antonio Gaudí

1984 · ★ 7.2

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926) designed some of the world's most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject's organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.

Notre-Dame Résurrection

2024 · ★ 7

No synopsis available.

Ely Kahn: New York City's Mastermind

A look at the legendary architect Ely Jacques Kahn, designer of over 60 skyscrapers that helped create the iconic Manhattan skyline.

Echo Of The Past: The Terrence Tower

2012 · ★ 10

A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and patients who recount their memories of the behemoth facility while also exploring the abandoned building as it is today.

Benninger

2023

No synopsis available.

200,000 Phantoms

2007 · ★ 7.4

In 1914, the Czech architect Jan Letzel designed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima Center for the World Expo, which has turned into ruins after the atomic bombing in August 1945. “Atomic Dome” – all that remains of the destroyed palace of the exhibition – has become part of the Hiroshima memorial. In 2007, French sculptor, painter and film director Jean-Gabriel Périot assembled this cinematic collage from hundreds of multi-format, color and black and white photographs of different years’ of “Genbaku Dome”.