We are really delighted that our latest feature documentary is showing in Cork at the Triskel Arts Center from Sunday 10 July - Tuesday 12 July
"Directors Gogan and Rowley unearth a strange cross-cultural architectural mash-up between Ireland and Africa". Irish Times
****"Build Something Modern finds Irish fingerprints in unlikely places. Slyly, the film-makers set up a complex tangle of post-colonial ironies using small, evocative images". Irish Times
****"The documentary utilizes an extraordinary fusion of visually rich images... skillfully blended together to provide a rich, illuminating and coherent narrative" Film Ireland
Build Something Modern tells the story of a lost canon of Irish architecture. The film reveals the surprising and untold history about the adventurous architects who began their career in Africa and went on to become some of Ireland's most significant architectural figureheads. Between the 1950s and 1970s, young architects travelled to Africa for creative freedom during an era of relative cultural conservatism at home, while others designed buildings from Ireland that they themselves would never see in their completed form in Africa. The film travels back to the 1950s, to a still largely colonial Africa where the Irish missionary movement was at its height, and traces the story of the buildings through the devastating impact of wars that destroyed many of the structures right through to the present day.
Reworking stunning imagery from both the personal archives of the architects and recruitment films made by the missionary orders, the film encompasses Still Films unique visual and storytelling style. Build Something Modernis a touching and revealing film about the special relationship between architects and the structures they create. Accompanied by an evocative soundtrack which establishes connections between memory and construction, the film is as much a study of the effect time has on the mind as on physical structures. Build Something Modern is a meaningful portrait both of the lives of spaces as well as those of the people that create them.
Build Something Modern is a Reel Art film funded by the Arts Council. The film is directed by Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley (Seaview, The Rooms) and produced by Maya Derrington (Pyjama Girls) with Original Concept & Research by Dr. Lisa Godson
Build something Modern was premiered at JDIFF last February where Still Films were awarded the Dublin Critic's Choice Discovery Award for new talent. You can purchase tickets online at:
https://triskelarts.ticketsolve.com/shows/126517027/events
