Architecture film and documentary festival Ark Rex is organised for the first time in November 2019

Ark Rex
29–30 November 2019
Amos Rex
Mannerheimintie 22–24, Helsinki

On November 29–30, 2019 Amos Rex is mounting a wide-ranging festival of architecture documentaries and films. Ark Rex will explore the Bauhaus Manifesto written by Walter Gropius in Weimar a century ago, and the legacy of the world-renowned Bauhaus school. It will examine the products of modernism and its most fascinating architects, not forgetting the Nordic angle. Besides documentaries that take us into the Bauhaus and its production, the festival will include dramatic films and films exploring current issues in the built environment. Apart from the silver screen, the two-day festival will stage talks providing background and more in-depth information.

The venue is a building in modernist spirit that heralded a new era in Helsinki, one of Finland’s finest cinemas, the Lasipalatsi’s Bio Rex and its foyers.

Globally there have been numerous festivals devoted to the alliance of film and architecture. Architects have always been interested in films, and sometimes they even make them. Many film directors have studied or are great admirers of architecture. There are also plenty of films in which buildings or environments shaped by the human hand play an important role. Many thrilling settings, and especially their spatial features, have directly inspired ambitious film makers and cinematographers. There is an abundance of documentaries about architecture or architects, and fiction films showing the construction of something that is great – larger than human life. The work and lives of architects have often been bound up with the major upheavals of their times. Ark Rex provides lovers of film and architecture with a lively forum in Finland, too.

Curator
Tarja Nurmi, architect SAFA
+358 45 676 5636, arkkivahti@gmail.com

Coordinator
Kaj Martin, Programme Director, Amos Rex
+358 50 523 1343, kaj.martin@amosrex.fi