Film as Curatorial Tool

Join the at e-flux Screening Room on Saturday, October 5 at 5pm for Film as Curatorial Tool, an afternoon with selected documentaries produced by the CCA in conjunction with exhibitions exploring topics of quality of life, urban development and decay, and ecological design. The screening will be followed by a conversation with e-flux Associate Curator of Film and Video Lukas Brasiskis and e-flux Architecture Assistant Editor Christina Moushoul, who will be joined by CCA curators Francesco Garutti and Irene Chin, on the use of film in spatial studies and storytelling. The program will be introduced by guest curator Sara Silva.

The CCA is an international research institution and museum founded in 1979 on the conviction that architecture is a public concern. In the past decade, the CCA has expanded into film as a format to investigate the forces shaping our environment, and how architecture may shape society in turn.

Films
Now, Please Think About Yesterday (2019, 23 minutes)
Shot inside the headquarters and call centers of Gallup, the documentary closely observes the processes and the people behind the design and execution of the World Poll—the data released in the highly publicized World Happiness Report. Conceived by Francesco Garutti and directed by Erin Weisgerber for the exhibition Our Happy Life.
كیف لا نغرق في السراب / To Remain in the No Longer (2023, 38 minutes)
In 1962, Oscar Niemeyer was invited to conceive an international fairground in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon, which was never completed. By examining the precarity of the project site that remains to this day, the film reflects on the country’s current socio-economic crisis. Conceived and directed by Joyce Joumaa under the CCA’s Emerging Curator program.
进岛方向 / Into the Island (2024, 41 minutes)
The film follows Xu Tiantian during preliminary site visits on Meizhou Island. Famous as the site which gave birth to the cult of the sea goddess Mazu, the island is an environment where religious pilgrimages and mass tourism, traditional farming techniques, and strict conservation policies co-exist in a fragile balance. Directed by Joshua Frank for the ongoing Groundwork film and exhibition series. Conceived by Francesco Garutti and Irene Chin, and directed by Joshua Frank, for the ongoing Groundwork film and exhibition series.

Bios

Irene Chin, Curatorial Assistant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, leads research and development on film and exhibitions. She has been contributing to projects at the CCA since 2015, including Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention (2016), Our Happy Life: Architecture and Well-Being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism (2019), and The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework (2021), and Groundwork (2024–2025). She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute, NY and a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, MA.

Francesco Garutti has been Associate Director, Programs at the CCA since 2017, and supervises the Exhibitions and Public Programs department. His recent curatorial projects include the exhibition and film series Groundwork, the exhibitions Our Happy Life: Architecture and Well-Being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism (2019) and The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework (2021). He directed the Out of the Box exhibition and publication program on the Gordon Matta-Clark collection (2019–2020) and the Amancio Williams fonds (2023–2024). Before joining the CCA, Garutti was Art and Architecture Editor at Abitare magazine (2011–2013) and worked as an architect and researcher for Peter Zumthor Architekturbüro (2007–2008), exploring the intersections between art and architecture to activate cross-disciplinary research. He has also curated projects such as Elegantia at Triennale di Milano (2016); War Games at Villa Croce Contemporary Art Museum Genoa (2016); and, as Emerging Curator at the CCA (2013–2014), conceived the film and editorial investigation Misleading Innocence (Tracing what a bridge can do).

For more information, contact [email protected].

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator near 180 Classon Ave (a garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Host or Publisher e-flux Screening Room