MAIJA ISOLA, MASTER OF COLOUR AND FORM
Directed by Leena Kilpeläinen—97m—subtitled—2021
Finnish artist Maija Isola began her long and remarkable career in 1949 as a textile designer at Printex, a home furnishings and fashion company which preceded Marimekko. Over 38 years, she designed more than 500 fabric patterns, covering an amazingly diverse range of motifs and design techniques. Drawing inspiration from traditional folk art, modern visual art, nature and countless trips around the world, Isola’s most well-known pattern is the Unikko pattern, created after the founder of Marimekko had announced that no floral fabrics are to be designed at the
company. Isola did not accept rules or restrictions and designed in protest a complete collection of bold floral patterns. The documentary film Maija Isola Master of Colour and Form travels in the footsteps of the dynamic artist through a series of letters written to her family and lover.
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HOUSE WORKS + MEMO MORI
Directed by Emily Richardson—40m + 23m—2020Emily Richardson is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose films explore the nature of our
relationship to personal histories and the spaces we inhabit.
House Works is a film study on three modernist homes in East Anglia in the UK—architects H.T. ‘Jim’ and Betty Cadbury-Brown’s 3 Church Walk in Aldeburgh, Suffolk (1962), architect John Penn’s Beach House in Shingle Street, Suffolk (1969), and Richard and Su Rogers’ Spender House and Studio—originally designed for the artist Humphrey Spender, near Maldon, Essex (1968). The stories of each house are embedded in the surfaces, objects and materials found within the domestic interior: reactivating these spaces lost to architectural history, the films express aspects of the potential stories held there.Memo Mori is a journey through Hackney tracing loss and disappearance. A canoe trip along the canal, the huts of the Manor Garden allotments in Hackney Wick, demolition, relocation, a magical bus tour through the Olympic park and a Hell’s Angel funeral mark a seismic shift in the topography of East London.
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HIGH MAINTENANCE, THE LIFE AND WORK OF DANI KARAVAN
Directed by Barak Heymann—66m—part subtitled—2020
Full of a wry wit and bursting with energy, High Maintenance is a warm and touching portrayal of Dani Karavan—world-famous Israeli sculptor, who has created nearly 100 environmental installations all across the world and won the most prestigious international art awards. Yet Karavan is far from satisfied. His monumental structures are deteriorating, his age is catching up with him, the political climate in Israel is driving him mad, and he becomes embroiled in a political and artistic conflict over his latest commission.
The director presents this larger-than-life personality with great sensitivity, including a fly-on-the-wall position at an intimate meeting between Karavan and renowned filmmaker Wim Wenders.
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GRETHE MEYER: THE QUEEN OF DANISH DESIGN
Directed by Isabel Bernadette Brammer—61m—subtitled—2021
Grethe Meyer is one of the great figures of Danish design, but perhaps also one of the most overlooked. As an architect and designer, Meyer left us with functional designs for the home, including dinnerware and cutlery, that are still of great importance today.
This hybrid documentary tells her story as a woman, artist, pioneer, mother and lover via an interesting and vulnerable narrative that puts her career, success and legacy into perspective.
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See full programme [
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