Architecture Film Lab (LIFT + MAXXI)

MAXXI Architecture Film Lab in collaboration with LIFT Sarajevo! is an innovative online program produced by the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, Italy in collaboration with LIFT - spatial initiatives, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It explores the intersection of architecture and film, providing a platform for young architects and video artists to experiment with cinematic storytelling as a means to analyze and communicate architectural ideas. Through lectures, workshops, and collaborative sessions, participants create short films that delve into contemporary architectural themes, such as this year's theme: video as an alternative media for architecture design that was one of the themes explored by exhibition Stop Drawing: Architecture Beyond Representation by Pippo Ciorra. Architecture Film Lab fosters a creative environment where emerging talents can reflect on spatial narratives and the socio-political dimensions of architecture. Over the course of approx. three months, as part of the MAXXI Architecture Film Lab in collaboration with LIFT Sarajevo! LINA Fellows: Atelier Remoto, Docar, Harvest Salon, Lab212 and Planting Solidarity Co. were asked to produce short films while being totally free to investigate one of the themes of the exhibition Stop Drawing: Architecture Beyond Representation by working independently within their own space, time and means. Aim of AFL was to provide LINA Fellows with a platform to explore different perspectives while having a personalized experience.

The representation of architecture, ever since Palladio and Alberti who were the first ones to use images in their treaties, has somehow changed architecture itself. Drawings, sketches, paintings at first, photography, film and computer graphics afterwards, made the social role, the political message and the cultural value of architecture accessible and relevant to a wider public in every part of the world. It is no particular wonder then that this aspect of design has always received particular attention from architects who in time have turned to professional photographers and artists to document and interpret their projects. More recently, thanks to a simplified access to technology and its larger availability, architects, especially among younger generations, are increasingly benefitting from photography and video as a powerful research tool that allows for an accurate and somehow intimate investigation of the built environment and for a more dynamic and engaging representation of their ideas and visions. Symmetrically video and media-artists are focusing their interest towards architecture as a dense repository of ideology, spatial conflicts and consumption, transforming it into an essential narrative tool and, sometimes, even the main character in their stories. Introductory text by Pippo Ciorra

Introductory lecture was given by the curator of the exhibition Stop Drawing: Architecture Beyond Representation and senior curator at MAXXI: Pippo Ciorra titled Stop Drawing. Aim of the lecture was to introduce LINA Fellows to the overall themes of the exhibition but to spark interest in this complex and beautiful thematics in architecture representation. Lecture took place on January 27, 2025 at 15:00 and was followed by a Q&A and short personal introductions by the LINA Fellows and LINA Members as well as tutors of the Lab. Introductions were made by LINA Fellows: Atelier Remoto, Docar, Harvest Salon, Lab212 and Planting Solidarity Co. /// LINA Members: Pippo Ciorra (MAXXI), Alessandra Spagnoli (MAXXI), Irhana Šehović (LIFT) and Dunja Krvavac (LIFT) and tutors Jasmina Čibić and Francesca Molteni.

Introductory lecture was followed by two lectures given by experts chosen by LINA Members. First expert lecture was given by a Bosnian-Herzegovinian film director, animator and video game artist Ivan Ramadan. Ivan Ramadan has over 20 years of experience in the digital animation industry, having films Tolerant, Kiyamet and Aždaja as his most notable awarded projects all while co-founding AI Interactive game development studio. Ivan's lecture aimed to provide perspective of digital animation and video games but highlighting thematics such are: local context, tradition and culture. Second lecture was given by Liam Young, an Australian born architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is founder of the think tank Tomorrow's Thought Today, a group whose work explores the possibilities of fantastic, speculative and imaginary urbanisms. Young also co-runs the Unknown Fields Division, a nomadic research studio that travels on location shoots and expeditions to document emerging trends and uncover the signals of possible futures.

Both lectures by Ivan Ramadan and Liam Young aimed to educate LINA Fellows about different aspects of film making and give them insight into two different approaches; Ivan Ramadan highlighted in his lecture a more explorative approach that incorporates elements of his personal life, his country's tradition and culture, interpreting them as storytelling motifs; Liam Young on the other hand had a more academic approach highlighting structure, worldmaking and concise storytelling.

Lectures were followed by an online workshop led by online workshop tutor Daniel Schwartz, filmmaker, photographer and teacher. He studied sociology and media at University of Pennsylvania, visual ethnography at the University of Botswana, and has an MFA from the Zurich School of Arts. His films have been screened and broadcasted internationally. He recently concluded a trilogy of documentaries made with the Canadian Centre for Architecture on architectural responses to demographic trends in cities around the world, focusing on the rise of homelessness, solo-living, and aging populations. He currently lives in Atlanta and teaches the history, theory, and practice of documentary filmmaking at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

WORKSHOP BRIEF by Daniel Schwartz:

Let's pitch some films to each other.

The pitch session is a feature at many film festivals. Filmmakers get in front of an audience - sometimes intimately small and sometimes auditorium-filling big - and try to sell their work-in-progress to potential investors, distributors, and sales agents. This format might inspire excitement, dread, or some mixture of the two, but even when pitches don't result in additional financing or production partners, it's often one of the best ways for a film team to advance their project. It forces you to take stock of your existing ideas, any footage and editing you've already completed, determine who your audience might be, and evaluate what you need to realize their dreams.

You are, presumably, not in production yet. So your pitches will consist of speculative ideas, references, and conceptual sketches. That's great. It's the most liberating phase of the filmmaking process. So let's bask in the creative freedom together and see what kind of patterns emerge.

Please come with 2-3 ideas for your film projects. The presentation should take no more than ten minutes in total to deliver. Your goal is to convince me and other participants that you are developing a film worthy of the precious time, money, and effort it will require to make. Hopefully you'll convince yourself in the process.

Considerations:

Editorial Qualities: Clearly communicate what the film's story is. What is the narrative structure. Who is your audience? What do you want your audiences to learn intellectually and feel emotionally after watching? Why do you, personally, want to tell this story?

Formal and Technical Qualities: How would you describe the style and aesthetics of the film? Will it be similar to other works you or other people have made? What kind of craftsmanship will be necessary to achieve the technical quality you aim for? Will your budget and schedule allow you to achieve these goals?

Online workshop aimed to achieve a more dynamic format compared to lectures and Q&A sessions but also to underline decision making processes in film making; how ideas are set up and shaped, how to develop topics, approaches, understanding the scopes, opportunities and limitations, etc.

Online workshop was followed by tutor presentations by Jasmina Čibić - Jasmina Čibić is a Slovenian performance, installation and film artist who lives and works in London. Jasmina represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennial with her project "For Our Economy and Culture". Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at: Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, CCA Glasgow, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, MGLC Ljubljana and Ludwig Museum Budapest along with group exhibitions at MAXXI Rome, MOMA NY, MUMA Monash Museum, Marta Herford and Guangdong Museum of Art China. Čibić's films have been screened at Whitechapel Gallery, London Film Festival, HKW Berlin, Louvre, Dokfest Kassel and Copenhagen International Documentary Festival. Cibic was the winner of Jarman Award, B3 Biennial of the Moving Image Award and MAC International Ulster Bank and Charlottenborg Fonden awards.

Francesca Molteni graduated in Philosophy at the University of Milan, she studied Film Production at New York University. Since 2002 she has produced and directed television formats, documentaries, videos and installations, and curated design exhibitions. In 2009 she founded MUSE Factory of Projects in Milan, a production house specializing in contemporary art, design and architecture. She received the "Award of Awards" for Innovation from the Presidency of the Italian Republic, the Honorable Mention of the Compasso d'Oro, and the Cathay Pacific Women's Entrepreneurship Award. She collaborates with la Repubblica, Vogue, Casa Vogue, AD, Elle Decor. She is the author of the book Business Icons. The great game of industry, Carocci editore.

Both Jasmina Čibić and Francesca Molteni were available for single tutoring/editing sessions lasting 45 minutes per LINA Fellow but could be scheduled at any time, giving LINA Fellows support throughout the entire film making process. There were 2 check-in sessions, one being a group mid-term review session. Former LINA Fellows that took part in the earlier editions of the MAXXI Architecture Film Lab also gave lectures highlighting their experience for the 2025 Fellows /// Ewa Effiom, Locument and Fem_arc.

It was important to have LINA Fellows from previous editions of the MAXXI Architecture Film Lab talk about their experiences during the filmmaking process. This segment helped current LINA Fellows to hear from their peers' experiences as much as it was important to have experts in the filmmaking filed such are Jasmina Čibić and Francesca Molteni.

A NOI CARO by ATELIER REMOTO

(Lara Monacelli Bani + Valentina Merz, Jacopo Biffi, radioLINA spazio/suono)

A group of friends meet for lunch, the garden is empty. There is a long wooden table, food and wine. One would like to build a strange house, a shelter for everyone. Memories, impressions and spatial thoughts bounce from one side of the table to the other. Personal space, narrated by each one, becomes, with words, voices and gestural stories, a binder of spaces, now shared, to be imagined, built, occupied together. Lunch is over, and while waiting for coffee, measurements are taken. You get up and try to cross over, to occupy the fallow, to fill the void with what you discovered at the table. Together we try to build a new domestic space, gathering desires and memories, aerial and intangible structures for a new way of thinking and, inevitably, living. A collective methodological experiment to design and build with memory, voices and bodies. What is your favorite domestic space? do you know why? Could you describe it with just your voice and your hands? Have you ever thought of territory not only as a physical space, but a relational space? How could we build, a house in a hamlet, a shelter in the woods, for centuries, anywhere, without technicians, architects, specialists, without sheets, pencils or drawings?

A GREAT TOGETHER by DOCAR

(Rocio Calzado and Jasper Meurer)

In the midst of a ravaging housing crisis, Europe is moving beyond demolition to seek alternative ways of dealing with its modernist housing heritage. The Great Together follows a collection of such large estates and explores, through transformation, maintenance, privatisation and demolition, how utopia collided with local politics, market pressures, and community habits. Great together is a free translation of the French term Grand Ensemble, a collective housing typology that spread across post-war Europe. Monumental, avant-garde and utopian, these structures detached themselves from local aesthetics to offer a universal response to the housing crisis of their time. They all explored new ways of living, integrating sophisticated design with precise governance strategies. Over time, such ensembles also experienced stigmatization, social and physical decay, and, in some cases, demolition. However, the housing crisis in Europe's large cities, coupled with current climate breakdown, renders demolition an outdated approach. On the contrary, large housing estates are a key part of the solution to these challenges. As a journey through Europe, the film portrays complexes in Vienna, Rome, Belgrade and Toulouse, four stories that together transcend their local specificities to reflect a broader struggle, a continental response, and an act of scaling.

SAY CHEESE! by HARVEST SALON

(Livni Holtz, Sebastian Reinicke, Nicolas Seiler)

Say cheese! is a short movie directed by Harvest Salon, produced for the MAXXI Museum's exhibition Stop Drawing! in collaboration with LIFT, Days of Architecture in Sarajevo. Harvest Salon examines national archival footage from the 1950s to the 1990s, showing how the image of alpine landscape was constructed to become an exploitable resource in the public perception. Through an essayistic exploration, these images are fragmented and recomposed to create a fictional space where the history of hydro-energy development intertwines with the industrialization of Swiss cheese production. With this film, Harvest Salon analyzes how images shape collective narratives. By switching back and forth between the objects under construction, the movie questions the role of the moving image in securing public acceptance of nationally significant projects. The roles of construction workers, scientists, and cheese producers gradually transform into performances only existing to be filmed. The alpine landscape becomes a constantly shifting stage for cinematic exploration that directs how we relate to it today.

THE UNFINISHED CITY by LAB212

(Béatrice Lartigue)

The Unfinished City explores the work of theorist, architect and urban planner William J. Mitchell (1944-2010), a professor at the MIT Medialab. Mitchell is the author of a trilogy that explores the impacts, challenges and potentials raised by the development of digital technology on the way we think about and design the city. The Unfinished City takes a subjective, dreamlike perspective on the themes Mitchell sketched out over 25 years ago. The fragmented, shifting city that takes shape before our eyes becomes the film's main protagonist. Thought of as a living organism, this architecture also echoes the thinking of the Metabolist movement that emerged in Japan in the late 50s. Metabolism views cities as dynamic, evolving systems where buildings, like living organisms, can grow and adapt over time. The film combines "traditional" animation techniques with Machine Learning tools.

ECHOES OF RESISTANCE: A FILM ABOUT HOUSING IN ZURICH, SWITZERLAND by PLANTING SOLIDARITY

What if our neighbourhoods could speak? What would they tell us about belonging, loss, and the lives that unfold within their walls? Echoes of Resistance traces the emotional architecture of a neighbourhood facing displacement. It delves into its histories, its ruptures, and the forms of resistance that have arisen in response. At the heart of this narrative is a yodel composed and performed by Sophie Aeberli, alongside her choir and band. This yodel echoes through the streets of Zurich as a sonic memory of the homes that may soon be lost. Through song and protest, the film reimagines representation not as something static, but as something embodied, felt, and shared. It calls us to reimagine housing as a universal right, reminding us that solidarity can be found in the most unexpected places. Echoes of Resistance is a poignant reflection on the rising cost of living, both in Switzerland and beyond. It urges us to listen, feel, and respond to the urgent need for change in how we think about home and community.