Celluloid architecture

File under: film, architecture, events, Wellington

These days it seem like there's a specialist film festival for every taste and interest: human rights, vegetables, silent films and even Phoenix dactylifera. There's even one for architecture buffs, and the Wellington season starts at the Penthouse this Friday.

The Jasmax Film Festival, subtitled "Celebrating Architecture", shows documentaries about individual architects and buildings, but also more general films about urbanism and sustainability. Of the films on show, the ones that sound most intriguing to me are Building the Gherkin (about Norman Foster's astonishing London skyscraper), Lagos/Koolhaas (which will no doubt feature Rem Koolhaas drooling all over Africa's maddest city) and Regular or Super (concentrating on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but with a broader interest in architectural language and the role of the architect in society).

It's a little known fact that Mies was fond of a Martini, which is not surprising given that drink's celebration of icy clarity and obsessive attention to detail. I wonder whether he believed that Less is More when it comes to Vermouth?