Film and Architecture 2023 - International Festival

The Festival of Film and Architecture 2023 will offer the richest selection of films to date, a special accompanying program, and extraordinary screening locations.
Nearly forty documentary and feature films thematically focused on architecture, urban creation, design, and visual arts. The most diverse program to date will not only take place in established cinemas but also in architecturally significant locations.
The main theme of this year's edition, titled Construction, will encompass fascinating buildings as well as the forms of cities, homes, and ways of living that are shaped by social and ideological constructs. Various perspectives on how to address the original during the transformation of post-war buildings will be offered by films from the Limits of Originality section. Critically and uniquely filmmaker-processed portraits of significant personalities from architecture and design from Sri Lanka, through Scandinavia, to Brazil will be presented in the series Personas. This year's curator of the traditional Inspiration section is architecture and design theorist and publicist Adam Štěch.
“Almost 400 relevant applications were submitted in this year's open call, and the program, which includes a record number of short and feature-length films, was assembled not only from them. Great attention has been paid to our domestic and foreign guests who will participate in screenings in Prague and more frequently in the regions this year. Moreover, we have prepared a special program featuring a musical performance, a lecture accompanied by thematic film excerpts, and for the first time, a masterclass,” comments the festival's dramaturge Karolína Vacková.
The accompanying program of the Inspiration section by Adam Štěch will include, besides a lecture on Jacques Tati, the French director, screenwriter, and comedian, a curated selection of scenes from the Italian dark film genre giallo, showcasing exceptional realizations of interior design from the 1960s and 70s. Following last year's success, Aleš Stuchlý and Vít Schmarc, the film-critical duo known from the show "Čelisti", will return to the festival to discuss the Nordic documentary Entrepreneurial Dream, which deals with a residential start-up for passionate young entrepreneurs that blurs the lines between leisure and work. Stepan Kopečný and Jan Kostera, both active in audiovisual formations of the alternative electronic genre, will provide the musical performance for the Spanish visual essay Brutal Moods, focusing on the musicalization of brutalist architecture. For the first time, a masterclass format will be included in the program of the last festival evening. Documentarian Sven Blume, who will personally present his film Curved Lines of Beauty at the festival, will lead a lesson for fans of film and architecture dedicated to the personality and work of Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz. In addition to the accompanying program, further meetings and discussions with directors, architects, or film protagonists will take place during screenings.
The program of the 12th edition of the festival consists of a total of 25 screenings and accompanying events in Prague, primarily situated in the Světozor, Edison Filmhub, Cinema 35 in the French Institute, and the multifunctional space CAMP Prague. The Brno part of the festival includes 12 screenings at Art Cinema, CIT, on the university grounds of the Faculty of Architecture at VUT, or in the brutalist department store Prior.
In addition to established cinemas, architecturally valuable buildings such as the Cultural House in Březnice designed by architect Karel Prager, whose birth centenary falls this year, will temporarily serve as screening venues. Audiences will also enjoy films in the newly renovated Volman Villa in Čelákovice or at Gočár's Automatic Mills in Pardubice, which have undergone extensive conversion into a cultural center in recent years. Films will also be screened in the interiors of the Tugendhat Villa in Brno and in the Kraus apartment in Plzeň designed by the modern architecture pioneer Adolf Loos. “Compared to last year, the festival will take place in more cities, including unconventional locations with architectural added value, in collaboration with the sister festival Day of Architecture. We are not targeting only big cities, and we believe that audiences in the regions will appreciate this offer not just across the Czech Republic, but also in Slovakia,” adds Marcela Steinbachová, the festival director.


The complete program of the festival, just published, can be found at filmarchitektura.cz