In this poignant and deeply intimate documentary three kids temporarily removed from their parents find friendship and flickers of hope inside the worn walls of a remarkable orphanage in Eastern Ukraine, as a group of dedicated social workers create moments of joy and respite from childhoods all but lost.

ArchiShorts is a film contest celebrating the narrative potential of places, real and imagined. The contest is free and open to anyone interested in architecture and the built environment, and seeks to create opportunities for emerging filmmakers while building interest in the world around us. Winners of the annual 2-minute film contest will have films screened and a chance to speak about their films, and how they made them.

Bawa’s Garden is a road movie in search of the work of renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. The film follows a protagonist scouring the island for the ‘lost’ garden of Lunuganga. Finding the treasure might be the goal, yet her search is the catalyst for encounters with a series of characters and rarely visited buildings that reveal the story of Bawa’s life and work. Shot across Sri Lanka, this experimental documentary weaves dreamlike narratives with real life characters intrinsic to the output of this renowned 20th-century architect. This alternative docudrama is tantamount to the eclectic and quietly moving work of Bawa’s buildings and gardens, and the collaborators that influenced his oeuvre.

Best in the World is a revealing look beyond Copenhagen’s photogenic image. The Danish capital is considered one of the most liveable, inclusive and creative cities in the world. From an industrial city on the brink of bankruptcy thirty years ago, it has been transformed through political and architectural engineering. But at what cost? Today the city is an engine of inequality both within its own borders and in the surrounding countryside. Who ultimately benefits from this desirable new city? Celebrated writer and filmmaker Hans Christian Post takes stock of Copenhagen’s evolution through the eyes of architects, activists and writers to assess what is at stake. A cautionary tale for cities across the world.

Eric Ravilious, one of Britain’s greatest landscape artists, is killed in a plane crash while on commission as Official War Artist in Iceland in 1942. His life is as compelling and enigmatic as his art, set against the dramatic wartime locations that inspire him. This film celebrates this unique and still grossly undervalued British artist caught in the crossfire of war 80 years ago, whose legacy largely sank without trace, until now. This is the first full length feature documentary about Eric Ravilious, told in his own words through previously unseen private correspondence, made with the blessing of the Ravilious estate. Shot entirely on location in UK, Portugal and Ireland, the film asks what it is to be a war artist, featuring Ai Weiwei, Alan Bennett, Grayson Perry, Robert Macfarlane and others.

Enter the world of Federico Fellini. This is the world behind his camera on the sets and backstages of his films, captured by a hidden camera and brought to light after 40 years. That hidden camera belonged to Ferruccio Castronuovo. Fellini trusted him, between 1976 and 1986, to film backstage activity of Fellini’s films: Casanova, The City of Women, And the Ship Sails On, and Ginger and Fred. Castronuova’s Fellinopolis unveils a world apart, a city of the imagination populated by unique characters. The film provides a new take on Fellini and his methods. Exceptional interviews with his most trusted collaborators, many of them Oscar winners, speak of their relationships with the filmmaker, of working and living with him. They reveal Fellini’s playfulness, perfectionism, his charm and charisma, his inventions and lies, and his manipulations. Learn of Fellini’s views on women, on music, on method. Get lost with Fellini behind the scenes in Stage 5 of Cinecittà, Europe’s largest film studio. Enter Fellinopolis.

In 1939, Swiss-born Corbusian architectural envoy Albert Frey embarked on a decades-long journey of discovery. His world travels and love of nature would lead him to carve out a new style of modernism, leaving its indelible mark on the desert community of Palm Springs, California. With never-before-seen archival films, photographs and interviews, Albert Frey: The Architectural Interpreter — Part II continues to reveal the mystique of an influential architectural master.

The glorious failure that was Tativille, Jacques Tati’s ambitious film set consisting of fully realised modernist architecture, is the stuff of legends. In Jacques Tati: Tombe de la Lune, director Jean-Baptiste Péretié, whose previous films include profiles of Buster Keaton, Al Pacino and John Wayne, effectively goes beyond the rote story we’ve heard time and time again. Through an impressive amount of behind-the-scenes footage, we witness the full scope of Tati’s spectacular rise as entertainer and gentle commentator on modernity. Péretié leaves us with a renewed appreciation for the doomed Tativille and its genius, obsessive architect Tati.

A city of steel that's causing a lot of talk in the neighborhood. Japanese houses designed by their future buyers. A building site in kit form entrusted to students. In Charleroi, Liège and Brussels, three architects and a handful of utopian inhabitants will put their housing ideals into practice. Just out of May 68, they want to demonstrate the revolutionary potential of industrialized architecture. A human and architectural adventure that has been driving them for more than 40 years... What remains today of their houses of tomorrow?

Only in Theaters, a film by actor/director Raphael Sbarge, is an intimate and moving journey taken with the Laemmle family, spanning nearly three years of challenges, losses, and personal triumphs. Laemmle Theatres, the beloved 84-year-old arthouse cinema chain in Los Angeles, is facing seismic change and financial pressure. Yet the family behind this multigenerational business – whose sole mission has been to support the art of film – is determined to survive. This is a story about a family business, but also about the future of cinema.

An intimate portrait of the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, an architectural gem designed by Milan’s famous Studio BBPR and recently restored, along with its gardens, by the National Gallery of Canada.

Places + Spaces: Winnipeg is a series of vignettes that reveal some of the city’s most iconic buildings and communities. Stunning visuals and fascinating backstories showcase housing projects, libraries, places of worship, historic banks, skyscrapers and civic buildings, highlighting the city’s architecture and design. Directed by Noam Gonick (Bloody Saturday, Purple City) and created with the support of the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, the series is written by Gonick and Hayden Mushinski, a University of Manitoba graduate and 'maker' with an interest in music, art and industrial design. Mushinski also acts as host for each episode. There will be a Q+A with the filmmakers after the screening. Then join us for a small reception in the Platform Centre Gallery.

Richard George Henriquez (born 5 February 1941 in Annotto Bay, Jamaica) is a Canadian architect known for founding Henriquez & Todd with Robert Todd in 1969 which evolved over 50 years to become the Henriquez Partners Architects of today. His projects are known for its blend of unique design with its historical context. His accumulation of work are celebrated by dozens of awards including the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal in 2005, Governor Generals Medal in 1994 and the Order of Canada in 2017. He is currently a Principal at Henriquez Partners, along with his son Gregory Henriquez and continues to make art and sculptures alongside his architecture practice. “Richard Henriquez: Building Stories” explores his influences and focus on memory and history in his approach to his work.

The now-demolished council estate Robin Hood Gardens often occupies opposing positions within the architectural imagination. Was Alison and Peter Smithson’s 1972 brutalist contribution to the London cityscape a misunderstood masterpiece or a well-intentioned failure? Fifty years on, filmmakers Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner capture the building in all its glory just before the wrecking ball brings an end to the Smithson’s magnum opus. While the controversial East London council estate is honoured at the Venice Biennale, the film revisits the building's critics, champions and the inhabitants themselves, to determine the true legacy of this concrete utopia. Robin Hood Gardens is dead. Long live Robin Hood Gardens.

Can anyone be a movie hero? Can the world be locked in one film frame? Director Paweł Łoziński is watching people from his balcony as they are passing by: sad, thoughtful, glued to their phones, young and old. Neighbours, random visitors or simply passers-by. The filmmaker accosts them, asks questions, talks about how they deal with life. Standing there with his camera for over 2 years he has created a space for dialogue, a lay confessional of sorts, where everyone can stop by and tell their story. The protagonists carry secrets and mysteries, and are not easy to label. Every story is unique, and life always surpasses imagination. “The Balcony Movie” is a radical comeback to the beginnings of cinema, when man approached the camera. Maybe it’s enough to stop for a moment to get a deeper insight?

Melbourne has been an epicentre of arts and culture since the 1850s. It’s where the world’s first film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, was made, and where the early 20th century saw the rise of back-alley movie theatres and outdoor cinemas across city districts—CBD, Brunswick, St Kilda and Preston. But in the 1950s, when Melbourne hosted the Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II, an idea took hold that the city’s Victorian architecture made it look the opposite of a modern metropolis. And so began a demolition blitz that paved over a century’s worth of built heritage, razing many of the city’s movie theatres. Featuring rare archival video and photography as well as the invaluable input of key historians, this loving and revelatory work of local history allows us to reimagine the former glory of Australia’s film and art capital. In examining Melbourne’s rich architectural and social past, director Gus Berger (Junked, MIFF 2014) also prompts consideration as to how continuing development and gentrification may impact the city’s artistic lineage and treasured landmarks. The Lost City of Melbourne is a celebration not just of Melbourne’s beloved, bygone picture palaces, but also of its enduring relationship to the cinema itself.

Centraal Beheer in Apeldoorn Netherlands will undergo a transformation. Built in 1972, the abandoned office building is laureate architect Herman Hertberger’s most iconic building. He calls the project to transform it into contemporary, sustainable spaces for housing, offices, and leisure ‘the proof of the pudding’, as his structuralist ideals from the 1960s and ‘70s intended buildings to be flexible and sustainable. How is his vision perceived today? What prevails? Profitable square meters or space for people? In this film portrait we get to know Hertzberger, 90, as a passionate, humorous, and modest man whose vision of what architecture means for people and society is valuable to this day.

What is the worst punishment: to look at one of the world's most beautiful landscapes, or to stare into a gray wall in an industrial area? The first high-security prison is being built in Greenland, and the film follows three inmates throughout the eight year process.

After visiting Bauhaus, the most prestigious European school of design, the Wiener brothers became the most innovative and productive architects in the US south. Residential, commercial and public buildings designed from the 1930s to the 1960s kept up with progressive European architecture and at the same time were adjusted to local conditions. Unexpected Modernism explores these forgotten pioneers of American modernism.

Astral Projection is a monthly screening series exploring astrology through film curated by our Box Office Manager, Nic Kaneski. Join us in celebrating the beginning of each zodiac season with a screening embodying the qualities of the sign, directed by a filmmaker of the sign. For stargazers and skeptics alike and anyone interested in the intersection of astrology, pop culture, and identity. The retelling of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette. From her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to her reign as queen at 19 and to the end of her reign as queen, and ultimately the fall of Versailles. Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.

Please join us March 24, 7:00pm at Cinematheque for the launch of Establishing Shots with Winnipeg Film Group’s Kevin Nikkel. This event features a conversation with Andrew Burke. Establishing Shots captures a diverse group of filmmakers in an immersive oral history of one of the most important and notorious artist-run centres in Canada: the Winnipeg Film Group. Both a deep dive into the life of an internationally renowned institution and an exploration of the growth of an experimental film movement, this richly illustrated collection of interviews produces a vibrant picture of the Winnipeg Film Group’s origins, successes, failures, and ongoing impact.

Join us for McDonald at The Movies, where comedian, star and co-founder of Kids in the Hall, comic Kevin McDonald will present a film handpicked from the archives of comic history. .A comic allegory about a traveling Bushman who encounters modern civilization and its stranger aspects, including a clumsy scientist and a band of revolutionaries. Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.

The father of video art and coiner of the term “electronic superhighway,” Nam June Paik was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Born in Japan-occupied Korea, Paik studied as a classical musician before moving to Germany in the 1950s. Forever changed after encountering avant-garde composer John Cage, Paik became a member of the influential experimental art movement Fluxus, which created new forms of art and performance. Eventually immigrating to the United States, he became fully engaged with television and video art in a way that would revolutionize how the world thinks of image-making in the electronic age. First-time feature director Amanda Kim tells the remarkable story of Paik as a citizen of the world and trailblazing artist, who both saw the present and predicted the future with astonishing clairvoyance. With Steven Yeun reading Paik’s own written words — showcasing the artist’s strategic playfulness and immense creativity — Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV is a celebration of perhaps the most modern artist of all time. Presented in partnership with send + receive: a festival of sound.

After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on (an unexpected) journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

A sculptor (Michelle Williams) preparing to open a new show must balance her creative life with the daily dramas of family and friends, in Kelly Reichardt’s vibrant and captivatingly funny portrait of art & craft.

Three adolescent boys become enraptured with life in the queer world as they experience it for the first time. It isn’t until a loss of life that they are forced to acknowledge the reality they have chosen to leave behind.

Join us for our new series, Staff Picks, where our Winnipeg Film Group staff will select and introduce new and old favourites. This month’s selection was chosen by Cinematheque projectionist Omid Moterassed. Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La Haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis. Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.

In Mussolini's Italy, repressed Marcello Clerici joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife and lover dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller's anthology pieces. Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue and breathtaking color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. Newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Minerva Pictures under the supervision of Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci.

Eight-year-old Vicky (newcomer Sally Dramé) has a mysterious gift: she can recreate any scent she comes across, even that of her beloved mother Joanne (Palme d’Or winner Adèle Exarchopoulos). When Vicky’s estranged aunt suddenly returns to their mountain town, the invocation of her fragrance plunges the young girl back in time to unravel the mystery of Joanne’s fiery past with her now sister-in-law. The acclaimed breakout from filmmaker Léa Mysius (screenwriter for Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard), The Five Devils forges a witchy and wildly imaginative fable out of family secrets and queer romance.

Join us on April 1 for a presentation and panel discussion on the current state of ufology with science writer and educator Chris Rutkowski and National Chief Investigator for MUFON Canada Jason Carignan, hosted by Murray Toews and Jim Van Dusen, producers of Strangeness Index. Learn More at www.urbanstickman.com. Fire in the Sky synopsis: A group of men who were clearing brush for the government arrive back in town, claiming that their friend was abducted by aliens. Nobody believes them, and despite a lack of motive and no evidence of foul play, their friends’ disappearance is treated as murder.

Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is accused of an unspecified crime and shambles through a series of bizarre encounters in an attempt to clear his name in the face of a hellish bureaucracy. Restored in 4K by Studiocanal and the Cinémathèque Française, with the support of Chanel, from the original 35mm negative at L’image Retrouvée.

An all-female hard rock band rents a condo for a much-needed vacation. Their tranquility is cut short by a heavy metal dream-demon and his murder weapon of choice: the drill-tar. Written and directed by Deborah Brock (Rock ’N’ Roll High School Forever), Slumber Party Massacre II combines the most successful elements of Satisfaction, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and “Beverly Hills, 90210” to create one of the most outrageous trash-slashers. Although the sequel contains none of Slumber Party Massacre’s subversiveness, it *does* have a wise-cracking killer who materializes from a dream and takes time out for breakdancing. This is how life should be.

Amy Holden Jones turned down an editing job on E.T. to direct this movie. She made the right choice. Written as a commentary on the inherent sexism of slashers by feminist icon Rita Mae Brown (but shot completely straight), The Slumber Party Massacre is a terrific inside joke that also delivers the goods as a skid row photocopy of Halloween -- complete with a killer who gets figuratively castrated when the tip of his power drill is hacked off. With its stylized photography, plot points that involve pizza, and endlessly cool homemade synth score, The Slumber Party Massacre is a drop-dead masterpiece of subversive trash-horror.

In writer-director Sophie Jarvis’ compelling debut, set in the seemingly peaceful Okanagan, a distraught cannery worker discovers an invasive insect that could threaten the livelihood of her entire town. “On its surface, the film plays out like a restrained drama, but a psychological thriller boils beneath. What results is a tense, atmospheric vision of existential crisis blended with the mysterious, perpetual drama of our surroundings that together illuminate the fickleness of our relationship to nature itself.” - TIFF

Join us for a free program of new short works created by members of the Winnipeg Indigenous Filmmakers Collective, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. More details to be announced. Presented in partnership with Urban Shaman and generously sponsored by William F. White International.

Introduced by director John Barnard on April 22. Beth, a volunteer watch person of an isolated northern city battles a plague that transforms the few remaining residents into empty, zombie-like automatons. She discovers that by entering an alternative dimension through her own dreams, she’s able to stave off the illness during the long, possibly endless winter. But will her power be enough to sustain her?

A group of women in an isolated Mennonite religious colony in Bolivia as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a string of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men.