Cohering around themes of social and spatial justice, the twelfth edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival celebrates film as a medium to frame architectural conversations. With concerns ranging from the demolition of social housing, to the trials of migration across political thresholds, ‘At the Border’ confronts its audience with a sense of spatial conscience.

More than 130 years after the emergence of cinema, it’s worth noting how much of our lives are spent staring at screens, breathlessly waiting for what comes next. Contemporary spectatorship happens now at an individual level; while the Lumière brothers wowed swooning crowds from Paris to Bombay through the Cinematographe, today we subject ourselves to a daily harrowing of videos on personal screens, streaming world events with hearts in our mouths.

The high-cortisol consciousness surely coloured the curation of this edition of Arquiteturas Film Festival, under the ongoing direction of architect and author Paulo Moreira. Universal across almost twenty separate works — each critically connected to concerns and predicaments of a spatial nature — were themes of social injustice, oppression, struggles towards self determination, crises of environmental and social security. These topics are surely reflective of the issues with which architecture may align itself, through the provision of housing, the design of urban and rural developments and the extraction of natural resources.

The festival opened with the exceptional 2024 documentary ‘Mother City’, based in Cape Town — often called the mother city of South Africa — amid the roiling housing struggles, forced evictions and explicitly racialised violence that characterise the lives of its less glamorous, but immeasurably charismatic residents. Through the activist group Reclaim the City, closely followed in Miki Redelinghuys and Pearlie Joubert’s film, we witness starkly compelling confrontations with lawyers, politicians, police, passers-by — even mercenary thugs — around the controversial proposed redevelopment of Tafelberg in Sea Point. Comprising the former grounds of hospital and nursing residences, the prime parcel of real estate is ostensibly ripe for profit, after laying fallow in the face of dire housing crises in the city. Protests at the appalling conditions for locally unhoused communities are met with ruthless violence and the razing of temporary settlements. The response: a defiantly illegal occupation and an imaginative adaptation of space, which demonstrates the ways in which agency can by marshalled — and how architecture becomes a means of self-actualisation.

The story, though powerful, is not a new one, and the struggle continues for Tafelberg and other sites for those represented by Reclaim the City; the issue has inflated into a political football even as housing crises and land prices rise in tandem. Architect and novice film-maker Antonio Paoletti covers a similarly visceral narrative of disenfranchisement in his piece ‘When I came to your door’, a poetic portrait of absence in a demolished, decades-old settlement in Addis Ababa even as the corporate highrise looms over its shell; based on a discarded love letter found among the ruins, this one twangs at the heartstrings. The growl of bulldozers haunts activist Claudio Carbone’s short film ‘Maio’, curtailed due to the COVID crisis yet acute in its portrayal of precarious and petrified inhabitants of the 6 de Maio informal neighbourhood, rendered helpless by the plans of capital investment.

Both ‘Mother City’ and ‘When I came to your door’ bagged AFF’s inaugural awards; a third went to ’Outro Ilha’, a tender work made of archival footage shot in the port city of Sines, over the last fifteen years. Effectively the film is a love song from director Eduardo Pereira to the people city, gateway to Portugal’s energy supplies and home to a petrochemical refinery as well as being the birthplace of Vasco da Gama. Sines is also home to a large community of migrants from the Cabo Verde archipelago, living tendrils of Portugal’s colonial past, descendants of the former Empire with children and grandchildren scattered like beads between Isla de Santiago, São Tome, Isla do Sal, the Netherlands — and Sines itself. For this community, a sense of stability is the result of a determined state of mind. Pereira’s portrait captures the appropriation of space alongside the integrity and indelible memory of another home.

Grounding this edition of the festival in Porto itself, a special focus on the neighbourhood or bairro of Aleixo defined a series of films screened after a visit to the site. Here, over a dozen years ago, five Modernist towers of social housing were demolished; addled by drugs and grossly neglected by the municipality, the whole neighbourhood was marked as a failure. Remarkably, the community association of the neighbourhood is still going strong, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year; the sense of collective memory is acute despite the absence of Aleixo itself. The films ‘Bicicleta’ and ‘Russa’ offer deeply affecting glimpses into the cooperations and conflicts of tower residents; their configurations around staircases, corridors and liftwells offering camaraderie and claustrophobia in equal measure. Happily, a reprieve is found in ‘Historia de Aleixo’, a charming and recent animation drawn and voiced by children who continue to benefit from services provided by the Phoenix-like Aleixo associação.

In the vitrine space of Canal180, a partner venue for the festival, an installation by Portuguese architect and digital media artist Sara Orsi brings our attention back to the small screen. In her work ‘Open Structures’ — presented in collaboration with curator Justin Jaeckle — an endlessly remixed stream of videos alert us to urgencies, ruptures and challenges beyond our immediate environment. Using a clever construction of code, Orsi scrapes and remixes several dozen independent YouTube videos that trace forms of resistance — against political hierarchies, against capitalism, against oppressive regimes, against censorship — recombining them into a collage of sound-and-image bites that recall the dizzying freedom of access to information and dispersed community, mirroring the original promise and premise of the internet. At the same time, the cacophony and contrast that emerges from an automated mash-up of media mimics the overwhelming sensation we have all experienced after extended periods of digital deluge.

A couple of documentary works foreground and document the ways in which indigenous communities maintain and build not only their environments but also a sense of identity and connection to the earth. ‘The Maloca of the Matses’ follows the mission of a group of Matsés — one of the latter, if not the last, voluntarily isolated communities in the Péruvian jungle — who decide to protect land from the extractive processes of fishing, removing wood, plants by building a maloca, a traditional communal longhouse.

In such acts of collective building one sees possible reconfigurations for the role of the architect, and the ways in which atomisation renders people distant from an intimate knowledge and understanding of their environment. Take the role of the chuiquid — the giver of advice, in some ways parallel to the architect, but one who acts for the collective form of the community as much as, or even more than material form or structure. Erected through spoken directions given on site, the Matsés’ communal construction reflects social organisation and offers a way to pass intelligence through generations — harvesting, cajoling and weaving various types of palm, liana, and wood. This Maloca is about an existential collective representation, rather than collective dwelling as for previous generations. But without a longhouse, the community can signify neither its presence nor its values; the leader of this community comments that through the building of the Maloca, “I am coming back to being”.

Kire Godal’s ‘Maasai Eunoto’ is a cinematic archive for the Maasai community, even as its traditions are threatened and curtailed by the Kenyan government. Kenya has the Maasai warrior shield on its national flag, yet due in part to mandatory school terms and the prevention of Maasai customs, the young men undergoing the Eunoto ritual — which takes place every fifteen years — are far fewer in number than there ever have been before, and this visually arresting film is witness to a proud, venerable and sadly fragile culture.

Fragility of hope was poignantly conveyed in Abdullah Harun Ilhan’s ‘Free Words: A Poet from Gaza’, which follows the story of Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha through his detainment and passage from Gaza to America — where he was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Set against the rubble of a war-torn and destroyed land, Ilhan’s film visualises Toha’s claim that the only home he can build is one made of words. Elsewhere, the charming and emotional short ‘Spider Zan’ gives a glimpse into the worldview of a young Iranian woman, its skilful use of point-of-view shots, interiority and domesticity conveying the social tensions and borders that constrict around some of us more than others.

Indeed, to quote a line from ‘A Machine to Live In’ — an intentionally trippy, cyber-speculative critique of Niemeyer’s Brasilia, viewed through the lurid incantations of Masonic and occult-laced evangelism — ”If you’re forced to live in someone else’s dream, you’re fucked.” By contrast, ‘The Terminal Beach’ tells another tale: that of dream interpretation — or what might develop when the architects’ best laid plans go awry. In a remarkable story of an abandoned utopia; invited by the president at the time, the office Ricardo Bofill — then an idealistic free spirit of the Catalan intelligentsia — planted a suprematist series of structures intended to function as a model agricultural village, of which dozens were planned but never built. Bofill (who later declared himself a starchitect, leaving many of his utopian ideals behind) reportedly believed the pilot site of Houari Boumedienne Agricultural Village to have been swallowed by the north Saharan dunes. In fact the residents — who currently number over three thousand — of Bofill’s abstract, geometric fantasy have inhabited and adapted its spaces continuously, since its inception in 1973. Indeed, architectural intentions can be taken up, translated and metamorphosed into newly pulsating, previously unimagined patterns of existence.

Partnering with the Arquiteturas Film Festival this year is the Bordeaux-based centre for architecture, arc en rêve, which institution has been fomenting and framing architectural discourse for its local and international communities for decades. This year, aside from participating in the judging of the AFF awards, arc en rêve has reproduced part of one of its most compelling and charming exhibitions: Classroom: a teenage view, produced in collaboration with Z33 in Hasselt and the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon and curated by Joaquim Moura. At O Instituto — the cultural centre run by Paulo Moreira and the organisational ‘home’ of the Festival — all the videos from the Classroom exhibition carry the perspectives of young people on the subject of their learning spaces, with all their conventions and constraints. In the next room is a preview of a forthcoming show at arc en rêve: a series of films under the heading ‘Libre Acceso’, shot on location in South America on the subject of public space.

Mauro Bucci’s ‘The Strong Man of Bureng’ scooped the fourth and final award from this year’s festival. Following its endearing protagonist Essa from his family compound in The Gambia to his unlikely business partner’s apartment in Finland — and finally, reduced to a hideous condition in a refugee encampment on the outskirts of Rome, we are quickly and emotionally involved with the responsibilities to community and self that traverse national borders and political boundaries. From humiliation to heroism, the precarity of life conducted across borders is powerfully wrought.

A couple of personal favourites included ‘Twin Fences’, by Yara Osman — a truly remarkable and unique narrative which traces two histories: first, the surprisingly fascinating story of the Lakhman concrete fence, a true icon of Soviet architectural infrastructure — and second, a more tender personal tale, tracing the pained pasts of the author’s Afghan father and Ukrainian mother. Osman manages to meld humour, style and sensitivity in this sophisticated piece. Finally, Brazilian photographer and artist Gustavo Balbela, presented ‘The Radiator’: an unassuming, incredibly sophisticated debut that jump-cuts between the apparent placidity of the East Anglian city of Norwich with the scathing anti-imperialist critique of Professor Maria Conceição Tavares, to hilarious and profoundly critical effect. Judging by the caliber of these early and impressive works, Balbela and Osman are names to watch.

During the course of scheduled events, the city witnessed labour and housing protests as well as Porto’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade. Rather than ignoring or succumbing to these disruptions, the festival adapted, quickly changing venues and noting these disturbances as part and parcel of our attention. If the selected screenings deal with the oblique realities of cities and spatial conditions, it’s only natural that we respond to those with critical awareness when they occur outside the theatre.

A tangible sense of community is framed by the collective agreement to suspend disbelief; to enter, together, into a suspended state of animation while amplifying our visual and aural attention. The power of collective spectatorship blossoms at the Arquiteturas Film Festival due to the ample space in the schedule allowing for reflection, conversation and above all, the building of connections around societal, spatial, civic and architectural concerns.

Bios

The Arquiteturas Film Festival is a platform for discussing and disseminating architecture through films, installations, debates, and walks, organised by INSTITUTO. It features a programme with three sections: Official, Guest Institution and Portugal Special. The festival takes place in various venues across the city, including: Batalha Centro de Cinema, Casa Comum, Canal 180, Circo de Ideias, and INSTITUTO.

Shumi Bose is chief editor at KoozArch. She is an educator, curator and editor in the field of architecture and architectural history. Shumi is a Senior Lecturer in architectural history at Central Saint Martins and also teaches at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural Association and the School of Architecture at Syracuse University in London. She has curated widely, including exhibitions at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2020 she founded Holdspace, a digital platform for extracurricular discussions in architectural education, and currently serves as trustee for the Architecture Foundation.