→ instituto
[festival organiser]

Instituto is a focal point for different forms of cultural expression, located in the heart of Porto. The team’s interests and backgrounds have given rise to a programme that diverges from the field of architecture to encompass the visual and spatial arts, critical thinking and multidisciplinary collaborations. We seek to encourage the creation and exploration of new contemporary discourses through interdisciplinarity, the informality of the space and the will to tackle burning issues in today’s society.

Since 2021, Instituto has taken up the challenge of organising and reinventing the former Arquiteturas Film Festival. Now in Porto, the festival is cementing its reputation as an international platform for discussing and disseminating architectural production through films, exhibitions and debates.

→learning to unlearn
[festival’s theme]

Architecture accommodates cultures and people from all walks of life, but it often fails to consider pressing issues such as social justice, ecological crisis, and decolonisation, over a dominant Western paradigm on architectural education and practice. The 11th edition of Arquiteturas Film Festival seeks to challenge this hegemony, by reflecting on these entrenched discourses within the field.

We invite audiences on a captivating cinematic journey through the complexities of architectural knowledge production and its societal impact, exploring how architecture can contribute to reimagining conventional forms of representation, questioning extractivist practices, and dismantling colonial narratives.

PROGRAMME

→ bêka & lemoine
[guest directors]

We are thrilled to announce Bêka & Lemoine as Guest Directors of Arquiteturas Film Festival 2024. Focusing their interest mainly on how the built environment shapes and influences our daily life, Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine have developed a very unique and personal approach which can be defined, in reference to French writer Georges Perec, as an "anthropology of the ordinary". Presented by The New York Times as the "cult figures in the European architecture world", Bêka & Lemoine's work has been widely acclaimed as "a new form of criticism" (Mark) which "has deeply changed the way of looking at architecture" (Domus).

→locument
[guest curators ]

AFF welcomes Locument as the Guest Curators of this 11th edition!
Using architecture and film as analytical, critical and subversive tools, this research studio combines filmmaking with architecture and urban research. Diving into stories that reflect on problems that resonate throughout the globe, their work focuses on recreating the complex storyline hidden under the surface of the visible spectrum.

→experimental programme

This programme brings together architects, artists and researchers to reflect on the discourses rooted in the discipline of architecture and give voice to practices that promote its decolonisation.

It is through this interdisciplinary approach that critical readings on the shared history between colonising and colonised countries are produced. Using the city of Porto as an exploratory site, we invite the public to confront with plural perspectives on the role that architecture and spatial practices can have in these processes.

This programme is complemented by the upcoming book “Aprender a Desaprender” (Portuguese only) published by Dafne, edited by architect Paulo Moreira, with a diverse group of authors, which will be launched during the festival.

→ portugal special programme

The Portugal Special Programme brings the festival's theme, "Learning to Unlearn", into the context of the hosting country. By presenting projects in various cities, this section offers a platform to re-evaluate the role of architecture in Portuguese society. Focussing on particular places, it seeks to delve into current issues, such as the housing crisis, as well as revisiting public space projects related to the country's colonial legacy. The film programme is complemented by debates with authors, protagonists and invited experts.