RIBA’s architecture film screenings promise a cinematic summer

The Royal Institute of British Architects' architecture film screenings, ‘RIBA Film Nights’, has launched, exploring, during the summer, the relationship between architecture and film. Showing at the RIBA headquarters at 66 Portland Place in London, the series launched on 29 June 2023 as one of the final events of the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2023, the annual month-long celebration of architecture that takes place every June and this year explored the theme ‘In Common’.

Architecture film screenings at the RIBA this summer

The evenings invite viewers into the uniquely personal perspectives of three separate contemporary practitioners (Clara Kraft Isono, Jim Stephenson and Elettra Fiumi, each present for a post-screening director’s Q&A or panel discussion). The trio have used the immersive medium of film in different ways to share and communicate their own stories, viewpoints and experiences of architecture. Their work shows how film is vital to understanding and thinking about architecture, through documentary, in-person interviews, archival footage, artistic reflections or conceptual expression – and how film brings people together and starts conversations. 

The opening evening presented Bawa’s Garden, a film which follows protagonist director Clara Kraft Isono, a filmmaker, architect, AA alumna and former RIBA Council member, on her search for Tropical Modernist architect Geoffrey Bawa’s ‘lost’ garden of Lunuganga in Sri Lanka, whilst telling the story of his life and work. Described as a ‘docudrama’ and ‘travelogue’, the film – which premiered at Raindance Film Festival in the UK in October 2022 – combines dreamlike narratives with conversations with Bawa’s collaborators and scenes of his rarely visited buildings. 

For the second evening (6 July 2023), Jim Stephenson, architectural filmmaker and photographer, curates a series of short films exploring observation and travelogues. This evening is linked to the RIBA’s current London architecture exhibition of film work by Stephenson, titled ‘The Architect has Left the Building’, which presents a dual-screen film installation of Stephenson’s archives over 15 years, documenting the everyday reality of people using architecture in the UK in projects by the likes of Grafton, Carmody Groarke and Jamie Fobert. 

Another very personal approach to film, Radical Landscapes (screening 11 July 2023 and originally premiering 15 June 2023 at Biografilm festival, Bologna) explores director Elettra Fiumi’s father Fabrizio Fiumi’s role in the 9999 group, a collective of radical architects based in Florence working in the 1960s and 1970s alongside Archizoom and Superstudio. Following her father’s death, Fiumi discovered ‘reels of mysterious Super 8 film footage among his possessions’, which prompted her to explore his life and work and revive the 9999 group’s avant-garde philosophy through archival footage, contemporary interviews and actualisations of unmade projects. 

architecture.com