CITY 21

SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 8pm – SCREENING
CITY21

This film production arises from a worldwide learning journey that was transmuted into cinematic composition illuminating some of the key perspectives + initiatives that are re-shaping the ethos of the 21st Century City.

The underlying quest of the filmmakers is to reframe the conventional and uninspiring visions of the urban future with an unprecedented combination of fresh, invigorating, sustainable, economically viable, and life enhancing concepts.

Below are some of the themes we have explored in an effort to loosen the geometric and economic grip on the urban imagination:

The Sacred Origins of the City – City Plans through time

The City as Memory Theater – David Mayernik’s Timeless Cities – Useful knowledge transmitted through the generations.

Regenerative Design – Nature and Architecture, the transformation of the Biosphere2 Project into Eco-Village design

The Creative Green City – The Lighthouse Project in Glasgow

Findhorn – the Art of Creating Eco-Villages

Magic Architecture – The Underground City of Damanhur, Italy

The Utopian Imagination – Poetry and Architecture/The Open City Project in Ritoque, Chile

Stewart Brand – The Long Now Perspective

While the filmmakers have been enormously pleased with the success of our previous documentary: Ecological Design: Inventing the Future, we are convinced that powerfully destructive forces like: over-population, unrelenting urban sprawl, generic and uninspiring design programs, threaten the promising conceptual breakthrough of recent times.

A debilitating resignation about these pressures, often expressed in jaded phrases like: “you can’t fight City Hall” makes it imperative that alternative and eminently achievable visions of the future be known to as many people as possible. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, otherwise we will get the cities we deserve.

This quest is an example of heuristic filmmaking in search of a magic synthesis that inspires new insights and actions in support of making the World a more livable place for the children of all the species on planet Earth.