Storefront Manitoba Playlist is a monthly curated list of films, podcasts, and other resources that aim to entertain, inspire, enrich, and advance critical discussion.
While travelling is still mostly on hold due to the pandemic, July's Playlist will take you on trip around the world through film and more. This month offers stories that celebrate the people, architecture, landscapes, and cultures that make this world so beautifully diverse.
STRANGE AND FAMILIAR:
ARCHITECTURE ON FOGO ISLAND
2014 | 55 Minutes
In a rapidly urbanized world, what does the future hold for traditional rural societies? As Fogo Island, a small community off the coast of Newfoundland, struggles to sustain its unique way of life in the face of a collapse of its cod fishing industry, architect Todd Saunders and social entrepreneur Zita Cobb's vision for positive change results in the envisioning, designing and building of strikingly original architecture that will become a catalyst for social change.
PRECISE POETRY: LINA BO BARDI'S ARCHITECTURE
2013 | 54 Minutes
A film about the famous Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. This cinematic journey through her most important architectural projects in Sao Paulo and Salvador da Bahia poses the question of what remains of a person in the work they leave behind.
SWITZERLAND: AN ALPINE COUNTRY
2018 | 52 Minutes
Gentle, green meadows, rugged rock faces, mysterious lakes, dense forests, tall mountains, low-lying river deltas, quietly meandering mountain streams and smack dab in the middle, a unique fauna, this is Switzerland. We trace the elementary power of nature and present animals and plants in landscapes that have hardly ever been touched by mankind. Switzerland is an alpine country, but it is also Europe's surge tank. Rivers such as the Rhine and the Rhone have their sources here. Glaciers, crevasses, icy cold caves and the underwater dome of the Verzasca are the unusual settings we chose for this film.
THE LIFE-SIZED CITY: BEIRUT
2021 | 52 Minutes
Once considered the Paris of the Middle East, the ancient city of Beirut has survived brutal civil war, ongoing conflicts with Israel, political assassinations and endless bombings. Amidst crumbling buildings, a major garbage disposal crisis and frequent black outs, Beirutis take everything in stride, because they understand better than most that nothing gets done unless you do it yourself.
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAMPUS IN AFRICA
2019 | 25 Minutes
In his film The Most Beautiful Campus in Africa, architect and architectural historian Zvi Efrat documents and explores the planning and design of the University of Ife campus (now known as Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria, by the Israeli architect Arieh Sharon. Founded in 1960 in protest against British colonial education policy, the University of Ife was the first post-independence university in Nigeria to possess an architecture faculty.
THE LIFE-SIZED CITY: TOKYO
2021 | 52 Minutes
Modern Tokyo is a fascinating urban mystery. The largest urban agglomeration in the world, it is home to 38 million people - more than the entire population of Canada in one city. On the surface, Tokyo feels like an oversized, human-built environment, full of endless rows of towers, glittering neon and fast-moving citizens. But if you dig deeper, this megacity is much more than its impressive size.
PRAIRIE DESIGN LAB: Japan
2021 | 30 Minutes
This week we meet Jun Shibata, a Japanese student who came to the University of Manitoba to learn English & study architecture and was later accepted into the prestigious Bartlett School of Architecture. We also meet an individual from Brandon, Manitoba, named Will Galloway, who came to the U of M for two architectural degrees and then pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo to begin a 25-year career in Japan.
LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT:
Architects & Travelling
2021 | 31 Minutes
In this fourth episode of the Life of an Architect podcast, Landon and I take on the topic of traveling - or at least we start a conversation about traveling. When we sat down to prepare our show notes, it quickly became apparent that this was a topic worthy of several episodes. So to that end, we start with some of the up-front bits of traveling - traveling as a young person compared to a more "mature" person, traveling with children, packing, architectural bucket lists, and traveling for work.
UNESCO INTERACTIVE MAP
UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization preserves 1073 World Heritage sites in 167 countries. Use the interactive map to transport yourself to the World Heritage Sites with corresponding descriptions, photos, and more for each property.