Tokyo Ride | 宇野港芸術映画座

8/13 (Sat) 3:30pm & 8/15 (Mon) 7:30pm. In-person screenings only -Do not miss it!
Directors: Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, featuring: Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima, Morimoto-san. In English with SDH Japanese subtitles.

After the multi awarded “Moriyama-San”, “Tokyo Ride” is a new step of Bêka & Lemoine’s immersion within Tokyo’s busy daily life. Revisiting the genre of the road movie in a very diaristic and personal way, the film takes us on board of Ryue Nishizawa’s vintage Alfa Romeo for a day long wandering in the streets of Tokyo.

More than a portrait, in the classical sense, of one of the most talented and celebrated Japanese architect of today, the film renders in its pure spontaneity the experience of this friendly urban drift. Ryue Nishizawa narrates along the way his strong relationship with his home town through some sites he personally affectionates, buildings that have influenced him, and some of his own architecture projects.

The film questions how rooted architecture practice is and how much the built and cultural environment feeds and shapes our imagination.

“Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine’s way to look at architecture is similar to the vision of a cat walking through buildings in the city. It’s a really interesting way to see!” – Ryue Nishizawa

ILA BÊKA & LOUISE LEMOINE
“Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are two of the foremost architectural artists working today. Their films focus on the relationship of people and design, emphasising the presence of everyday life within some of the most iconic architectural projects of recent decades.” Barbican Centre, London.

The complete work of Bêka & Lemoine has been acquired in 2016 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York for its permanent collection.

Video-artists, filmmakers, producers and publishers, Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine have been working together for the past 15 years mainly focusing their research on experimenting new narrative and cinematographic forms in relation to contemporary architecture and urban environment. Focusing their interest mainly on how the built environment shapes and influences our daily life, they 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).

Selected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met) as one of the “Most exciting and critical design project of the year 2016”, elected “Game Changers 2015” by Metropolis Magazine, selected as one of the “100 most talented personalities of 2017” by Icon Design, in 2016 they have been selected among the participants of Mextropoli in Mexico City.

Their films have been widely presented in major biennials and international cultural events such as The Venice Architecture Biennale (2008, 2010, 2014), The Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016, the Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, Performa 17 in New-York, among many others. Their films are also frequently exhibited in some of the most prestigious museums and international cultural institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New-York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, the Barbican Centre in London, the CAPC museum of contemporary art in Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, or the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montréal, Canada.

Bêka & Lemoine’s films have also largely been selected and awarded by some major film festivals such as CPH:DOX (Copenhagen), DocAviv (Tel Aviv), Chicago International Film Festival (Chicago), Torino Film Festival (Turin), among many others.

Bêka & Lemoine are regularly invited to lecture in some important universities: GSD / Harvard University (USA), GSAPP / Columbia University (New-York, USA), AAP / Cornell University (USA), AA / Architectural Association School of Architecture (London, UK), Bartlett School of Architecture / UCL (London, UK).

In 2018 Bêka & Lemoine have been laureate of Villa Kujoyama, French residency program for artists in Japan. In 2019 Ila Bêka has been laureate Italian Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine have also been invited as guest professors at GSAPP / Columbia University (New York) for the New-York/Paris Program, at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Switzerland), at The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design in Delft (Netherlands), at Domaine du Boisbuchet (France) and at HEAD in Geneva (Switzerland).

They are currently teaching Diploma 16 at AA School in London
“The way we represent our buildings, shapes the way we build.”

Black and white, 90 min. 2020. Japan/Italy. In English with English subtitles and Japanese SDH caption subtitles.