Spots in Shots

Spots in Shots: Narrating the Built Environment in Short Film
Mélanie van der Hoorn
nai010 Publishers, March 2019



Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 10-1/4 inches | 240 pages | 120 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-9462084568 | $50.00

Publisher Description:

Spots in Shots explores a selection of little-known but fascinating short films made in Europe and the US between 1990 and 2017 that tell stories about architecture and urban development. Based on interviews with the filmmakers, the book asks how cinema can stir public interest in the oeuvres of architects.

Among the numerous cinematic gems discussed here are John Smith’s Blight (1996); Kibwe Tavares and Factory Fifteen’s Jonah (2012); Assembly Studios’ Fort Dunlop Green (2004); The Neighbourhood’s Saxton Leeds (2008); Imagen Subliminal’s El Espinar House (2013); Squint/Opera’s Post Barnsley (2003); Jem Cohen & Luc Sante’s Le bled (Buildings in a Field) (2009); Gabriel Kogan & Pedro Kok’s Casa Redux (2014); and Jordi Bernadó & 15-L Films’ Hic Sunt Leones (2013).

dDAB Commentary:

I have a sometimes unhealthy obsession with architecture and film, to the point that I'll be drawn to settings in films rather than stories. Likewise, I'm also a big fan of books about architecture and film, although there aren't many that tackle the subjects together. Some of my favorites include Mark Lamster's Architecture and Film, Juhani Pallasmaa's The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema, James Sanders' Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, and Steven Jacobs' The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. With an apparent shared interest in architecture and film, I was surprised to not know any of the "cinematic gems" listed in the above description of Mélanie van der Hoorn's Spots in Shots, the second in a trilogy on "alternative forms of representation and communication in architecture and urbanism." (The first was Bricks & Balloons: Architecture in Comic-Strip Form and the third will be focused on architecture games.) I recognize the names Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán) and Pedro Kok, but as photographers rather than filmmakers. Yet delving into the book, it's clear that Van der Hoorn is open to all sorts of architectural shorts, be they documentary, narrative, or even publicity.

Spots in Shots is organized into six chapters, three expository chapters with fairly explanatory names ("Between Fact and Fiction: Understanding the Short Architecture Film"; "From Moving Snapshots to Refined Artworks: The Development of the Short Architecture Film"; and "Festivals, Websites, Museum Collections: Where Does the Short Architecture Film Call Home?") and three chapters with the films themselves. The latter chapters partition the films – a dozen films per each – via narrative type and intent: "FEEL: Captivating the Imagination" (stories), "THINK: Challenging Reality" (documentaries), and "WANT: Gripping Positions" (promotion). A book about films can only explain them through words and still images, so the Spots in Shots website is helpful for watching the shorts. (That said, about half of the FEEL and THINK videos embedded on the website are password protected, while most of the WANT ones are, not surprisingly, available to watch.) A few highlights (and there are many), one from each chapter respectively: Jonah, which tells the story of Zanzibar's transformation into "Fish Man Town" through Hollywood-level special effects and acting; Petra Noordkamp's La Madre, il Figlio e l'Architetto, the first part of a documentary trilogy about Gibellina, Italy (yes, that Gibellina); and Bombastic Rubbish, a fast-paced, anti-modern reappraisal of UK theater architect Frank Matcham.

Spreads:


Author Bio:

Mélanie van der Hoorn studied Cultural Anthropology at the Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam, where she specialized in Material Culture. In 2005, she obtained her doctorate at Utrecht University... Since her move to Vienna in 2007 and the foundation of Gratwanderung in 2007, she has been working as an independent researcher and curator, and since 2013 as an external lecturer at various Austrian universities.

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