Another day at the AFFR started with the discovery of the architect Rudolf Schindler, who was portrayed by the Californian director Valentina B. Ganeva. She followed the history of this Austrian architect, who had been devotedly working for Frank Lloyd Wright, but was never recognized for his contribution to the masterpieces of his boss.
In the time of the Case Study Houses names like Neutra were always the ones that managed to be in the front line. But for famous architects, who featured in this film like Frank O. Gehry, Tom Mayne, Steven Holl, Wolf Prix and others, Schindler’s works were an example for their own architectural language.
In the “Q&A” after the screening Valentina B. Ganeva told the incredible story of how through a friend of her’s, who was living in one of the Schindler houses, she managed to get in touch with Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep had visited this place several times and offered to contribute her voice to this documentary. The voiceover for Schindler, being represented with an Austrian accent, was done by Udo Kier. What an achievement to get to work with such known architects and actors.
After a short talk with Valentina and a souvenir photo with us, we set off for another architectural highlight outside the festival: the “Fenix” – Museum, which was recently opened in Mai 2025. The name comes from Phoenix, because during the bombing in the 2nd World War the storage building burned down and was rebuild after its destruction. The depot halls on the peninsula of Katendrecht were completely renovated for the museum by the architect Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects, who added a steel construction on the rooftop, which is called the Tornado in the shape of a double helix.
This mirroring sculpture starts at the ground floor and offers different ways to climb up to the top over a length of 550m. As the museum shows art and history of migration, the winding path which can be followed offers different perspectives. This represents the idea of the migrants not being on a straight track in their life. At the ground floor one storage room is a labyrinth made out of piles of suitcases. Little signs on some of the suitcases link you to a personal story of contemporary witnesses that you can listen to. A very touching experience. The upper floor offered a vast exhibition space for art relating to the theme of migration. The whole exhibition surface covers 16.000 m².
Unfortunately we didn’t have too much time to get deeper into it, but it was definitely worth seeing. As Robert always says: “We have to keep something for next time”. We couldn’t find any place for lunch inside the halls anymore. There used to a food hall in the years before. But we found a nice café, “Kopi SoeSoe”, that offered wonderful sandwiches and cakes with fresh fruit, and hot ginger tea.
Being back at the AFFR we watched a film called “I am night at noonday”, which was more a fictional story of a man thinking he was with his beautiful black horse Don Quichotte, with a modern Sancho Panza on his delivery bike following him on his way through the gated communities of Marseille. As we saw ourselves also like being Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza on our “Less-is-more-tour”, fighting on our bikes for windmills, we were curious about this film. It was definitely not what we expected, but gave us a feeling of the social tensions in the suburbs of Marseille. Gaspard Hirschi, the French director, was giving answers to our questions, especially on the strong performances of horse and rider.
The last film we had picked was more like what one would expect from an architecture film, called “Beauty between the Lines” by Danny Berish and Ryan Mah, presenting a portrait of the Canadian architect Arthur Erikson. Beside his incredible oeuvre, he had a hidden gay relationship with the furniture designer Francisco Kripacz. The editing was wonderfully done by Cindy Au Yeung, who combined reenacted scenes with archive material, architectural plans, perspectives and wonderful camera shots, showing his projects and life in a festival for the eyes.
This was already the end of our experience of the Festival as we had to continue to our last destination on our tour tomorrow. Being moved by movies and moving architecture we were grateful for a very enriching day.
