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Because filming has long been restricted in Nigeria, few images of Lagos exist. Based on research by The Harvard Project on the City under the direction of Rem Koolhaas, this DVD represents a unique engagement with a hardly documented city, capturing multiple perspectives of a volatile moment in its evolution.
In 2002, Bregtje van der Haak, in cooperation with architect Rem Koolhaas and The Harvard Project on the City made Lagos/Koolhaas, a documentary on self-organization and urbanization in Nigeria. As a sequel to the documentary, Bregtje van der Haak together with designer Silke Wawro, developed the DVD: Lagos Wide & Close, an Interactive Journey into an Exploding City. The DVD contains an interactive video documentary (60'), edited from 55 hours of unused material that brings the viewer closer to the explosively growing megalopolis Lagos. With bus driver Olawole Busayo, the viewer moves through the city and has a choice of a distant ('wide') or an involved ('close') perspective, at any random moment in the documentary.
| Catalog Number: MC-660 |
Type: Feature |
Genre: Architecture |
| Copyright: 2005 |
Length: 120 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: 90-809101-1-2 |
UPC/EAN: 880198066091 |
| Label: Idea Books |
|
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-660 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Program MC-660 may be licensed for Exhibition.
Films In Compilation
Lagos Wide & Close directed by
Bregtje
Van Der Haak
Netherlands,
Documentary,
2005,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
02:00:00
Because filming has long been restricted in Nigeria, few images of Lagos exist. Based on research by The Harvard Project on the City under the direction of Rem Koolhaas, this DVD represents a unique engagement with a hardly documented city, capturing multiple perspectives of a volatile moment in its evolution.
In 2002, Bregtje van der Haak, in cooperation with architect Rem Koolhaas and The Harvard Project on the City made Lagos/Koolhaas, a documentary on self-organization and urbanization in Nigeria. As a sequel to the documentary, Bregtje van der Haak together with designer Silke Wawro, developed the DVD: Lagos Wide & Close, an Interactive Journey into an Exploding City. The DVD contains an interactive video documentary (60'), edited from 55 hours of unused material that brings the viewer closer to the explosively growing megalopolis Lagos. With bus driver Olawole Busayo, the viewer moves through the city and has a choice of a distant ('wide') or an involved ('close') perspective, at any random moment in the documentary.
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2007-07-24 Green A City
Rem Koolhaas, internationally renowned architect and urban designer, teams with documentary filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak to produce a multilayered video foray into the city of Lagos.
It's often said these days that most of the world's people are urbanites, but Lagos makes that statement seem trite. This coastal city in Nigeria is expected to top 24 million denizens by 2015, making it among the largest three cities in the world.
The megalopolis began to attract Rem Koolhaas in the early 1990s, and he returned repeatedly to this understudied city throughout the decade. His fascination with Lagos results in what he calls a "forced encounter" with a radically modern city, where the seemingly informal and random improvisations of people trying to survive are, upon closer reflection, made possible only because the city was planned as a generic modern city. It is solid planning that makes Lagos work.
"It's an extreme form of modernization," reports Koolhaas, "not some kind of 'African' city." And he suggests that people make brilliant use of cities even as systems go into "reverse," but there is still dependency on the original model.
Such provocative observations make this video worthwhile for anyone involved with the future of cities. What makes the video a keeper, moreover, is its "interactive" nature: the DVD allows you to mix and match between three audio tracks with two alternate video tracks.
One audio track is Koolhaas talking; another is first-hand accounts of life in Lagos; and the third is city sounds only. The video is presented as either wide, which has aerial shots of Lagos and its "go-slow" systems seen from masterly heights, or close, which puts the viewer on the ground right up against the dense foreground.
The possible combinations make for a unique psychogeographic experience. The DVD allows you the breathing room for analytic discussion in one viewing but, next time, the hypnotizing crush of visual details might silence all highbrow thoughts. Sometimes, Koolhaas is your guide. Sometimes you're alone with only ambient machine noise. Before you know it, however, the experience is over, and you're back in your own city.
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MC-813, 2006
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Future by Design is a documentary film by Academy Award nominated filmmaker William Gazecki, sharing the life and far-reaching vision of Jacque Fresco, a modern day da Vinci. Peer to Einstein and Buckminster Fuller, Jacque is a self-taught futurist... more >
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Jean Nouvel
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Jean Nouvel, 2008 Pritzker Prize winner, is one of the most innovative and unconventional architects of our time. He owes his fame to projects such as the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Opera House in Lyon, the Cartier Foundation... more >
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Notes for Those Beginning the Discipline of Architecture
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Architecture is a discipline plagued by its own insecurities, a curious mixture of optimism and pessimism, momentary successes and, more commonly, deep frustrations. In this new 18-page publication, Michael Meredith, Assistant Professor at the... more >
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