Choreographies of the Public Space
Choreographies of the Public Space
The Film, Architecture and the City cycle, organised by the Bizkaia Delegation of the Basque-Navarre Association of Architects (COAVN), within the framework of the BIA‘24/25 citizens’ activities, dedicates the first quarter of 2025 to the theme of mobility, under the metaphor of a choreography of public space, with the programming of three films that are in turn filmic references of urban mobility: Metropolis, a futuristic utopia of the technological city, directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, in the context of the artistic avant-gardes of the interwar period, remastered and accompanied by the recently recovered original soundtrack (BSO); Caro Diario (1993), by the Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti, an urban itinerary which in turn represents a journey through the memory of the present of the Roman metropolis; and A Night on Earth (1991), by the American director Jim Jarmusch, in which five stories that take place in as many cities are interlinked, all of them along a night-time taxi journey shared by the protagonists.
Basque-Navarre Association of Architects (COAVN Bizkaia)
Alda. Mazarredo 71, Bilbao
FREE ENTRANCE
30th January
19:00
Metropolis
Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927
Metropolis is an urban dystopia, a benchmark of interwar German expressionism, considered by UNESCO as a Memory of the World for its aesthetic treatment and unique representation of the society of the time.
This is a restored version of the film which, in addition to respecting the original editing, incorporates the soundtrack composed by Gottfried Huppertz for its premiere in Berlin in 1927. Metropolis presents a futuristic vision of the industrial city and a look at a profoundly dehumanised urban society.
In Metropolis, society is divided into two classes: the rich, who have the power and the means of production, and the workers, condemned to live in precarious conditions, confined to a kind of underground ghetto, where the industrial heart of the city is located. One day Freder, the son of the all-powerful Joh Fredersen, the man who controls the city, accidentally discovers the situation of the workers. After falling in love with Maria, a girl of humble origins who preaches brotherhood and good feelings, Freder alerts his father to the possibility of a proletarian revolt. The tycoon then orders the construction of a robot in the image of Maria in order to provoke the workers to revolt, and thus have a motive to act against them.
27th February
19:00
Caro Diario
Caro Diario
Nanni Moretti, 1993 (96’)
Nanni Moretti addresses himself in Caro diario, a film made up of three episodes in which the director films his own experience of Rome, as he rides through its streets on a motorbike (En mi vespa); converses with a filmmaker friend during a cruise around the Aeolian Islands (Islas); or recounts, in a markedly autobiographical vein, his anguished and erratic visits to different doctors to be treated for an annoying skin rash (Médicos).
But the three stories also represent an itinerant and critical look at everyday life in the city, under the guise of an improvised field diary: ‘I like to look at houses. How beautiful a film made only of houses’, Moretti observes, during the filming of a long tracking shot of the buildings in various districts of Rome, apparently abandoned by its inhabitants during the summer, ending with a heartfelt homage to the director Pier Paolo Pasolini, murdered in the suburb of the city.
27th March
19:00
Night on Earth
Night on Earth
Jim Jarmusch, 1991 (129’)
Five night taxis travel simultaneously through as many different cities around the world. In Los Angeles, a casting director discovers her new star in the young driver who takes her from one side of the city to the other. In New York, a man who wants to return to Brooklyn is forced to replace the taxi driver. In Paris, a blind female passenger becomes the driver’s worst nightmare. In Rome, a taxi driver thinks it is time to confess to the priest that he is carrying as a passenger. And in Helsinki, a group of friends discover that the driver has the most tragic story of them all. Like life itself.
Recognised by audiences and critics alike, Jim Jarmusch is one of the leading lights of contemporary underground cinema. His personal style, characterised by the telling of small stories embedded in big stories, serves as a pretext to elaborate an acid and emotive portrait of the figure of the loser on the fringes of society, always using a decadent and experimental aesthetic as a backdrop.
