This year, the popular annual Budapest Architecture Film Days will be streamed for everyone to watch at home. These Távmozi screenings take place between 4 and 13 March, a dozen or so English-friendly features underscored by urban themes. Here we select our five favourites. The buzzword for 2021? Reconnect!
This will be the 13th edition of BAFD. For the full schedule, see here. For ticket information, see here.
1/5
Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
Piet Oudolf is a Dutch landscape architect, but he’s more a Dutch Master
whose brush and canvas have been replaced by plants and landscape. At first
glance, this passion for plants may seem a little extreme, until you follow Five Seasons as it takes you through the creative process, the planning and calculations required to create such wonderful gardens. After all, plants are living beings with
different looks according to season and weather. Beyond aesthetics, the
rethinking of sustainability and ecology on post-industrial areas and neglected
neighbourhoods, and the impact of landscape architecture on our lives appear in
the same way. This orgy of colour is guaranteed to make every grey winter
evening better – though it might be some time before we’re traipsing wildly
romantic Dutch gardens again. The arty approach to horticulture is no surprise,
as accomplished director Thomas Piper has made some 30 films, focusing on
Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright and Jean Nouvel. Friday 5 March, 9pm. 75 minutes. English with
Hungarian subtitles.
2/5
Golden Age
With all this Baroque music, velvet armchairs, gilded chandeliers, marble
surfaces and Persians rugs, you could be in Versailles – but Golden
Age actually takes place in Miami, around the extravagant universe of America’s
most luxurious retirement home, the Palace. Here, life certainly doesn’t stop
at 70. Between cocktail parties and masquerade balls, the film also presents
society’s relationship to old age, issues of elderly care and its inherent
investor potential. Two Swiss filmmakers direct, Beat Oswald and Samuel
Weniger. Sunday 7 March, 7pm. 52 minutes. English with
Hungarian subtitles.
3/5
Aalto
As this is a film festival inspired by architecture, who better to
showcase than Finnish master, Alvar Aalto? His compatriot, the
award-winning Virpi Suutari, uncovers a little-known side of this pioneer,
allowing us to glimpse into the daily and professional lives of Alvar and his
wife Aino. She was also a designer and together, this architect couple lived
not only in love but also in constant inspiration. Richly illustrated with
archive images, video and gorgeous travelogue around Finland, Russia, America
and Italy. Sunday 7 March, 9pm. 103 minutes. English/Finnish with
Hungarian subtitles.
4/5
The Street
Many might know Hoxton purely because of the trendy urban bars set up
here in the late 1990s, forerunner of an across-the-board gentrification as
new-wave cafés and fashionable apartments replaced age-old family businesses.
Uganda-born filmmaker Zed Nelson documents the rapid changes transforming this former bastion of urban poverty
in East London, where the social and financial divide is growing ever wider.
The Street is also a snapshot of Britain on the edge of change, the ageing
white residents who tipped the balance in the Brexit vote, the years of
austerity and the astronomical price of property or flat rental. Tuesday 9 March, 8.30pm. 94 minutes. English with
Hungarian subtitles.
5/5
The Real Thing
Subtitled Real Life in Fake Cities, this documentary by Franco-Italian filmmaker Benoit
Felici looks at replicas of famous landmarks around the world.
Taking stand-out examples such as a fake Eiffel Tower in Shanghai, a copy of St
Peter’s in West Africa and a smaller Taj Mahal in Dubai, Felici begs the
question, if we have no problem with the Romans copying the Ancient Greeks, then
why do we think differently about European buildings in China? Saturday 13 March, 7pm. 67 minutes. In several languages
with English subtitles.
