Cinema Meets Design: I'm Launching an Exclusive Film Series at Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires!
- Ana Carrino
- May 26
- 4 min read
Bridging Two Creative Worlds Through the Big Screen
I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my curated film series on architecture and design that will complement the exhibition We Are Here! Women in Design 1900–Today, and which will run from Sunday, June 1 to July 27, at Fundación PROA. This exclusive program is the result of months of careful curation, bringing together 13 international films and a rich lineup of activities that promise to transform how we understand design through the cinematic lens.
The Vision Behind the Series
Complementing We Are Here! Women in Design 1900–Today
This film series was conceived as a companion to the groundbreaking exhibition We Are Here! Women in Design 1900–Today. My goal was ambitious yet clear: to invite audiences to think about design through diverse audiovisual narratives that blend documentaries and fiction, revealing the untold stories behind iconic figures in architecture and design.
Stories of Creation, Love, and Resilience
The carefully selected films showcase tales spanning from the early 20th century to today, featuring key personalities like Anni Albers, Ray Eames, and Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz. Each screening offers a unique opportunity to experience these compelling stories on the big screen, where design becomes both subject and storytelling tool.
Documentary Highlights: Celebrating Design Pioneers
Iconic Collaborations and Female Voices
As the artistic manager behind this program, I've prioritized films that explore different perspectives within design, particularly highlighting women's contributions to the field. Several titles stand out for their focus on emblematic collaborations:
Josef and Anni Albers: Art Is Everywhere and Eames – The Architect and the Painter reflect on partnerships that place women at the forefront of design innovation. These documentaries reveal how creative collaborations shaped modernist aesthetics while challenging traditional gender roles in professional practice.
Aalto, Architect of Emotions continues this exploration, examining how emotional intelligence and human-centered design philosophy influenced one of architecture's most celebrated figures.
Rediscovering Forgotten Pioneers
Two films in particular revive the careers of groundbreaking women who transformed 20th-century design:
Grethe Meyer – The Queen of Danish Design and Throwing Curves: Eva Zeisel showcase pioneering figures who revolutionized Scandinavian and Central European (and American) design, challenging both gender conventions and stylistic norms of their era.
Contemporary Perspectives
Objectified offers a contemporary reflection on industrial design and our complex relationship with everyday objects, bridging historical narratives with current design discourse.
Architectural Intimacies: Personal Stories Behind Public Works
The Human Side of Modernism
The Mies van der Rohes – A Female Family Saga provides an intimate portrait of architect Mies van der Rohe through the women in his life, constructing a moral portrait of modernity from a distinctly feminine perspective. This approach reveals how personal relationships shaped architectural philosophy and practice.
An Environmental Vision
Green over Gray highlights the environmental philosophy of Emilio Ambasz through four key projects. The film delights with its photographic composition, creating a sensory experience where architecture and nature merge harmoniously—particularly relevant in our current climate-conscious era.
Brazilian Modernism and Irish Innovation
The architecture section concludes with two remarkable profiles: Precise Poetry, exploring Brazilian-Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi's revolutionary approach to space and social function, and Eileen Gray, Invitation to a Voyage, offering the first exhaustive on-camera examination of the house Gray began building in 1926 under the enigmatic name E.1027.
Fiction Films: Design as Narrative Universe
Historical Drama Meets Design History
The program ventures beyond documentary with carefully selected fiction films that use design as both setting and character.
Lotte Am Bauhaus explores the lives of women at the legendary Bauhaus school, dramatizing the tensions between artistic ambition and social constraints that defined the era.
The Colour Room revisits the creative emancipation of ceramist Clarice Cliff, showing how personal liberation and artistic innovation intertwined in the decorative arts.
A Cinematic Treasure: L'Inhumaine
Perhaps the crown jewel of the fiction selection is L'Inhumaine (1924), presented in a fully restored 2K version and screened locally for the first time. This monumental film serves as a visual manifesto where design, experimentation, and technology converge, creating an extraordinary dialogue between Bauhaus aesthetics, Art Deco sensibilities, and avant-garde visual exploration.
The Intersection of Cinema and Design
Shared Languages, Mutual Influence
Cinema and design converge beautifully in this series, reflecting how both disciplines shape our everyday world and influence each other as creative languages. In every selected film, design functions simultaneously as subject matter and narrative tool—evident in set design, production design, costume choices, and visual composition.
Building Worlds Through Visual Storytelling
Each film demonstrates how design builds worlds that actively engage with the ideas proposed by the accompanying exhibition. Whether through documentary observation or fictional narrative, these films reveal design's power to communicate aesthetic, political, and social sensitivities.
An Ambitious Curatorial Vision
This curatorial project builds bridges between practices, eras, and languages, offering an expanded view of design—not merely as form or function, but as practice and way of life. The program demonstrates how cinema captures the multifaceted nature of design, from technical innovation to social impact.
The realization of this series has been possible thanks to the generous collaboration of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Isabel Bernadette Brammer, Rise and Shine World Sales, Muse - Factory of Projects, Fundación Arquia, Caspian Films, and Jyll Johnstone. Their support has been instrumental in bringing these rare and remarkable films to Buenos Aires audiences.
Join Me for This Cinematic Journey
Whether you're a design professional, cinema enthusiast, or simply curious about the creative forces that shape our built environment, this series offers unique insights into the intersection of visual culture and design practice.
The films offer multiple opportunities to discover how cinema and design inform, challenge, and inspire each other. Come explore how the stories behind our most iconic designed objects and spaces continue to resonate in contemporary culture.
See you at Fundación PROA for this unprecedented exploration of architecture and design through cinema.
Dowload the full program here (in Spanish) 👇
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