Vivid account of Suburbanites

FROM
:
Catherine Dilly
Jasmax Ltd

DATE
:
7th August 2008
SUBJECT
:
Film at Jasmax Film Festival crafts a vivid account of The Late Suburban Age

A film focusing on 21st century suburbanites is just one of the many insightful films that have been selected to be part of the 2008 Jasmax Film Festival.

The Jasmax Film Festival is brought to you by Jasmax and Home New Zealand magazine. This year the festival will run from the 11th until the 17th of September in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Tauranga, Rotorua and Arrowtown. The festival will run from the 16th of October through to the 22nd of October in Nelson.

This years festival includes award winning Canadian film, Radiant City.

Gary Burns, Canada’s king of surreal comedy, joins journalist Jim Brown on an outing to the burbs. Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, they turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age. Burns and Brown rummage through a toybox of cultural references, from Jane Jacobs to The Sopranos, to create a provocative reflection on why we live the way we do.

The recently released film, Koolhaas Houselife is set in one of the masterpieces of contemporary architecture of recent years: the house in Bordeaux designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA. Unlike most movies about architecture, this feature focuses less on explaining the building; its structure and its virtuosity than on letting the viewer enter into the invisible bubble of the daily intimacy of one of the icons of contemporary architecture.

Also included in this year’s line up is Oscar Niemeyer: A Vida é um Sopro, a documentary on the life and work of the greatest of modern Brazilian architects, Oscar Niemeyer.

“This year’s selection of films opens up a range of thinking in relation to the roles of architects and designers, says Greg Boyden, Managing Director of Jasmax “Architecture is as much a social practice as it is a material one; therefore we have selected insightful films that tell of societal and environmental shifts in communities and cities around the world.”

Through the topical documentary, Bird's Nest - Herzog & de Meuron in China, Swiss Architects, Herzog & de Meuron comment on the journey and the process of designing the National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. The documentary shows how Chinese culture affects the work of the architect: The specific architectonic form and the struggle to achieve it give us an insight into society, culture and everyday life in China.

Other films screening at this years festival include:

·         My Father the Genius

·         Mai Lynn: A Strong Clear Vision

·         Big Dreamers

·         Mon Oncle

·         The Power of Community

Radiant City, Oscar Niemeyer - A Vida é um Sopro, Koolhaas Houselife and Bird’s Nest - Herzog & de Meuron in China are all available now for review.

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