8 classic architecture and urbanism-related film and video works from black and white 1920s classics to modern cinema will be shown across Shenzhen during the Bi-city Biennale. All shown from original 16mm-film and include some special outdoor screenings. See below for the film list please.

Director: Shirley Clarke
Country: USA
Release Date: 1958
Language: English
Subtitles: /
Color: color
Run Time: 4 min

Plot: Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round is a short film played twice. Once with a sweeping jazz score and once with electronic music. There is no narrative, just sweeping images of the bridges of New York City. She records these structures driving across them and then superimposes images of the structural steel across the sky. Panning shots in opposite directions are superimposed. It could be argued that the superimposed shots seem to have no agenda other than artistic experimentation. A kaleidoscope of bridges with added coloured tints.

Comments: “In this film Manhattan Island becomes a maypole around which its bridges, detached from moorings, execute a bewitched and beguiling dance. The filmmaker has magically set them dancing to two different music tracks – an electronic score by the Barrons and a jazz score by Teo Macero. Each track affects the viewer’s response to the imagery of the film differently.”
—— Donna Cameron（filmmaker）

Genre: Short
Director: Francis Thompson
Country: USA
Release Date: 1957
Language: English
Subtitles: /
Color: color
Run Time: 15 min

Plot: A day in the life of the city and citizens of New York as seen through the fantastic eye, and the incredibly distorted optic lenses, of filmmaker Francis Thompson.

Comments: “And then there is what may be called the Distorted Documentary a new form of visionary art, admirably exemplified by Mr. Francis Thompson’s film, NY, NY.”
——Aldous Huxley（ the author of Brave New World ）

Genre: Documentary
Director: Pierre Chenal / Le Corbusier
Country: France
Release Date: 1930
Language: Franch
Subtitle: /
Color: B&W
Run Time: 11 min

Plot: The films proposal is not only to analyze the single house but also the popular neighborhood till the city planning idea for Paris, formulated by Le Corbusier. Architecture d’Aujourd’hui was created to let the new French architecture be known. The purpose of producing these film was to propagandise for new and modern architecture idea but at the same time to advertise the review.

Comments: “Architecture d’Aujourd’hui suggest the possibility of refering to subjects related to Le Corbusier’s clients and the understanding of the relationship between client and designer.”
——Prof. Antoni Pérez .Manosas （Dept de Projectes Arquitectonica of UPC）

Name in English: The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice
Genre: Short
Director: Man Ray
Country: France
Release Date: 1929
Language: Silent
Color: B&W
Run Time: 17 min

Plot: Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice. A castle is perched on a hilltop. Below it, a posh, modern villa. Meanwhile, far from Paris, two men with masked faces play dice in a bar. They decide to drive to Paris. Country roads, hills, fences. The posh “chateau” appears again: meticulous garden, fancy interior, odd sculptures. And at home? “No one, NO ONE.” For the next two days, masked figures play dice, frolic by the pool, perform exercises with a ball. Two new figures arrive. Masked. They search and find the dice. They dance. Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice.

Comments: “The most well-known film from the great surrealist artist Man Ray, Les Mystères du château de Dé is a hauntingly evocative poem to the transitory nature of life and a reminder of the role that chance plays in the grand scheme of things.”—— James Travers (moviedefrance.com)

Genre: Romance
Director: F.W. Murnau
Country: USA
Release Date: 1927
Language: English
Subtitles: /
Color: B&W
Run Time: 94 min

Plot: In this fable-morality subtitled “A Song of Two Humans”, the “evil” temptress is a city woman who bewitches farmer Anses and convinces him to murder his neglected wife, Indre. After Anses comes to his senses – just as he is about to kill Indre – the married couple renew their love in the city.

Comments: “Hollywood fell under the spell of Sunrise , and under its influence the camera took wings…” —— Rodney Farnsworth (moviereference.com)
“Murnau’s Sunrise was a unique mixture of the macabre and the humorous.”
—— N.K. (associatedcontent.com)

Genre: documentary
Director: Dziga Vertov
Country: Soviet Union
Release Date: 1929
Language: Silent
Color: B&W
Run Time: 80 min / 68 min

Plot: Vertov’s feature film, produced by the Ukrainian film studio VUFKU, presents urban life in Odessa and other Soviet cities. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have “characters,” they are the cameraman of the title and the modern Soviet Union he discovers and presents in the film.

Comments: “Man with a Movie Camera not only informs and defines film today—in many respects it still surpasses it.”
——Chris Flynn (Stylus Magazine)

Genre: Documentary
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Country: Germany
Release Date: 1928
Language: Silent
Color: B&W
Run Time: 65 min

Plot: At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema’s ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of the bustling metropolis.

Comments: “…the film is abstract, more of an artistic experiment than a historical document.This is a film about the possibilities of film more than about the specifics of Berlin.”——Tom Wiener(All Movie Guide)

Name in English: Nothing but time
Director: Alberto Cavalcanti
Genre: Drama Documentary
Country: France
Release Date: 1930 (Japan)
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Color: B&W
Run Time: 35 min

Plot: The life of a great city (Paris) from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor.

Comments: “ –Rien que les Heures was the first of the ‘city symphony’ films. Rien que les Heures is a curious and fascinating mixture of the aesthetic and the social.Cavalcanti’s viewpoint about all of this seems to be one of detachment: ‘c’est la vie’…” —— Jack C. Ellis(filmreference.com)