DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST. DOC EUROPA.
TOP 5 IRISH FILMS OF 2011 - Irish Times
"Directors Gogan and Rowley unearth a strange cross-cultural architectural mash-up between Ireland and Africa." Irish Times ****
"Build Something Modern finds Irish fingerprints in unlikely places. Slyly, the film-makers set up a complex tangle of post-colonial ironies using small, evocative images." Irish Times ****
"Employing geometric animations that echo their subjects' designs, the directors engulf the viewer in the architects' still-challenging aesthetic." Irish Times
Africa in the 1950’s. The colonising nations are preparing to leave. Independence is just around the corner, the first steps towards a new modern Africa are being taken. Yet Europeans are still coming in droves. This time however, it is missionary priests and nuns who are being shipped out to Africa in the thousands to “press the crucifix to the lips of the pagan”, or as was commonly stated at the time, to “save the black babies”.
Meanwhile in Ireland, a newly independent republic itself, but also a rigid conservative society run by the Catholic Church, young architects are eager to be among the first Irish modernists. Yet in the Ireland of the 1950’s, they find it impossible to design the modern buildings that they see being built internationally. And strangely, it is the missions that give them this opportunity.
Build Something Modern tells the story of a hidden canon of architecture - groundbreaking young architects who pushed the boundaries of design, with surprisingly little recognition in their own country. Between the 1950's and 1970's many adventurous architects travelled to Africa for excitement and creative freedom. At the same time others were given the opportunity to design hundreds of modern buildings in Africa, but remarkably never got to see the finished constructions.
These structures - churches, seminaries, hospitals and schools - were for the most part built as part of a massive community effort. They were co-ordinated by the missionaries, often without a contractor and with the architect mostly absent. This design by correspondance meant that plans sent from Ireland were often wildly misinterpreted.
Build Something Modern reveals a surprising and untold history about these people and their innovative creations. We travel back to the 1950s, when colonies were still in place, through the atrocities of numerous wars where many of the structures were destroyed, right up to present day Africa.
Reworking stunning imagery from both the personal archives of the architects and recruitment films made by the missions, the film encompasses Still Films unique visual and storytelling style. Build Something Modern is a touching and revealing film about people and the special relationship with the things they create as they reflect on it many years later.
Watch the trailer and clips rom the film on our Vimeo channel
A REEL ART COMMISSION.
FUNDED BY THE ARTS COUNCIL, FILMBASE AND THE JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. |
