Il Mondo in una Stanza (The World in a Room), the third edition of the film festival dedicated to architecture

A scene from the movie "Cornage"

The third edition of the Cinema & Architecture event, born from the collaboration between the Unibo Department of Architecture and the Bologna film library (Cineteca), held at the Cinema Modernissimo, aims to bring together two worlds, cinema and architecture, and to explore the ways in which they meet and interact. Five events, introduced by lecturers from the University of Bologna, to highlight the narrative dimension of cinema, through which ideas, concepts and provocations travel and which, through an emotional and aesthetic experience, allow us to appreciate the relationships that link architecture and engineering to other disciplines.

This year's theme, 'The World in a Room', focuses on everyday domesticity and interiors - a room, house, flat or any other place that falls within the concept of 'interior' - as drivers and/or active supports of the stories or their narrative cut.

The festival will open, on Thursday 2 May, at 8 pm, with the intimacy of "In the Mood for Love", which narrates life in the teeming density of a shared house through the protagonists. A mundane, stylistically impeccable universe in which thin walls communicate through sounds, noises and creaks, sometimes becoming almost non-existent membranes or insurmountable barriers, echoing or counterpointing the states of the relationship between the characters. Introduced by Prof. Luca Guardigli.

"Parasite", on Monday 6 May, at 5.15 pm, uses the architecture of the interior spaces (from the basement flat to the villa) to show an updated version of the class conflict in strong, sharp colours. An explicit, Asian version of the Tableau de Paris that asks the viewer to what extent the environments we inhabit define us, or not, and whether or not they are a projection of who we are. Introduced by Prof. Marco Alvise Bragadin.

In "12 Angry Men", on Monday 13 May, at 5.15 pm, Sidney Lumet uses architecture in an almost expressionist way to make literal, through a scenographic-architectural mechanism, the sense of the approach of an inevitable end. In the reconstruction of events, the consideration of the structure and orientation of spaces becomes fundamental to the narrative turn. Introduced by Prof. Andrea Luccaroni.

"Paz!" on Tuesday 21 May at 5.30 pm, brings to the screen the parts of Andrea Pazienza's rich, kaleidoscopic and conflicted microcosm that revolves around Bologna and student life in the late 1970s. Seemingly anonymous and 'harmless' interiors are the scene of apocalyptic and irreversible events, chaos and order, conflicts and harmonies of spaces, objects, styles and lives that are constantly chasing each other. The film becomes an opportunity to reflect on educational spaces, student living conditions, post-occupancy strategies and university life in Bologna. At the end of the screening, set designer Giancarlo Basili will discuss the themes raised in the film with Prof. Alessio Erioli.

"Carnage” on Wednesday 29 May at 6 pm will be the last film in the series, which centres on a quarrel between two children that leads to a meeting between their parents. Roman Polanski's direction transcends the theatrical dimension of the work on which the film is based: the impeccable and seemingly neutral bourgeois interiors allow the fierce comedy that takes place there to be enhanced, while the tight and claustrophobic shots force the viewer to follow this acute - and sometimes cynical - exploration of the human soul. Introduced by Prof. Maura Savini.

Admission by ticket only: 3.50 € for all Unibo students and staff, free of charge for the first 50 students of the Architecture and Building Engineering, Architecture-Engineering and Building Engineering-Architecture degree programmes who collect their ticket at the Film Library Bookshop, presenting their badge and degree programme enrolment certificate for the year 2023/24 (info Bookshop hours): full price € 6.00.