While architecture may make its way into the mainstream most prominently through its utilitarian uses or in the form of fashionable coffee-table books, German experimental filmmaker Heinz Emigholz’s longtime goal has been to make audiences see these buildings as so much more.
With a new series coming to Los Angeles on the filmmaker’s recent architecture-centered works, it seems that Emigholz may finally get his wish.
Beginning this Saturday at the Billy Wilder Theater, the UCLA Film and Television Archive will screen the multitalented director, writer and cinematographer’s two most recent films, “Loos Ornamental” and “Schindler’s Houses,” about the work of European modernist architect Adolf Loos and American modernist architect Rudolf Schindler, respectively.
With an in-house appearance by Emigholz himself, the series will then continue at both the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater film forum.
The Archive decided to pair these two films together for Saturday’s screening not only because they represent the filmmaker, but because the two architects whose work he profiles, Loos and Schindler, are closely connected.
“(Loos) was influenced by American architecture and went back to Europe to practice and started an academy,” said Cheng-Sim Lim, cohead of exhibition and public programs for the Archive.
Loos soon became a mentor to other architects in Europe such as Schindler, who later brought the ideals of modern architecture to Los Angeles.
“It’s like this cycle in the language of modernism and architecture,” Lim said.
While Loos’s modernist work was limited to Europe, Schindler advanced onto America after learning from Loos, and spread his mentor’s strong beliefs on modernism to a new country and a new era.
“The two films together will show how Schindler could carry out and further develop in freedom what Loos had conceived so consistently, and the degree to which Loos had to land in a dead end here in Europe,” Emigholz said.
Lim agrees about Schindler’s place in the history of modernist architecture.
“Schindler was able to come to America and work in an environment that was freer and take Loos’ elements to a new level,” she said.
While it may sound like just an hour and a half of looking at modernist structures, Emigholz’s filming style, which focuses on both the structures and their environments, adds to the production.
“He uses cinematic space and time and (that of) another medium ““ architecture ““ both of which have to do with space and time,” she said.
While Lim believes few in attendance will be extremely familiar with Emigholz’s work, she hopes at least the location of the modern architecture featured in his film on Schindler will attract a crowd.
“Some people will come because they are interested in architecture and Rudolf Schindler. … “˜Schindler’s Houses’ holds local interest. (But) maybe those people who are not architect buffs but who are interested in Los Angeles history will also be interested in Los Angeles’s houses.”
There are many different perspectives to take away from the two films, but Lim and the Archive just hope viewers walk away with something new.
Lim said, “Whether it’s a different view of “˜Schindler’s Houses’ or Heinz’s work or a different view of cinema … what they take away isn’t as important to us as that whatever experience they have will be meaningful to them.”