A teaser for the Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival
The Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival - or RADFF for short - goes to screen again around the motu soon - from opening days of 1 May in Auckland, 8 May in Nelson, 15 May in Wellington and Christchurch, and 29 May in Dunedin and Hawke's Bay.
Yasmine Ganley. Image by Greta van der Star.
This week LAA spoke with curator Yasmine Gatley about her association with the event, which began by being screened exclusively at Rialto Cinemas Newmarket in Auckland, has since acquired an international reputation and is now up to its 14th appearance.
In the print edition of the programme - available digitally here - Yasmine and collaborator Sara Black refer to a shared motivation to "provide a space for Aotearoa's arts and architecture industries to come together and celebrate progressive ways of thinking and creating", adding "it is within this exchange that better worlds are imagined and 'clever ideas' are put into practice".
Yasmine's path to curating the festival in recent years was paved by predecessor Clare Buchanan. For Clare this was an avenue for engaging interests in architecture and design as well as planning, environmental activism and social change, and for Yasmine an additional desire to nudge the festival into an arts realm.
Her curator's discerning eye is applied until 18-20 movies are selected, grouped under four headings: Masters of Architecture, Fascinating Females, Image as Language and Material from the Earth. The last earns a further description as the festival's "beloved Landscape Architecture category".
For 2025 a must-see for followers of renowned and significant landscape architects is a film centred on the life of Laurie Olin, titled Sitting Still.
Yasmine commends it for its humanity. “I loved the philosophy of feeling like a human has made what we see with their mind and hands”. [Editor’s note: LAA will run a separate story on this film, and will be looking for responses from cinema-goers - just drop a line to laaotearoa@nzila.co.nz to put your hand up to be a reviewer!]
An equally rewarding opportunity is on offer to attend a big-screen viewing of Ever The Land, in its 10th anniversary year. This film by director Sarah Grohnert is set on Ngāi Tūhoe whenua and explores the sublime bond between people and their land through a landmark Living Building Challenge™, a set of regenerative building practices most recently employed again at Ngā Mokopuna on the Kelburn campus of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University.
A "sensory-rich portrait" of Studio Mumbai architect Bijoy Jain as portrayed by "cult architecture documentarians" Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine also features in the Material from the Earth selection. As does the tale of a 50-hectare exotic arid-zone botanical garden created by colourful Australian artist Dale Frank in his backyard (official trailer here) and the story of a vast park of tree seedlings and green pavilions designed by Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana.
And elsewhere in the programme Kathryn Bennett of Rialto Cinemas singles out two films: Architecton as a "poetic study of stone and concrete materials" from acclaimed filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky, and Schindler Space Architect, for vividly bringing the pioneering work of R.M. Schindler to life.
Known variously as a prolific editor, art director, digital curator, and publisher working behind independent titles such as anyonegirl, Island Magazine, WAIST, and the book Men Carrying Flowers, Yasmine Ganley admires the way that landscape is wound into many of the underlying messages delivered via the RADFF.
"Often most successful architectural builds will have environment as the beginning and end, with a focus on how environment and nature are embraced".
Yasmine enjoys bringing her editorial skills to the fore through generating themes, ideas and audience appeal for the RADFF. She notes that during her ‘fandom’ of the festival, one of the most successful RADFF films is Five Seasons - The Gardens Of Piet Oudolf - described as an immersive and meditative documentary that reveals how the revolutionary landscape designer upends conventional notions of nature, public space and beauty.
She also enjoys "bending the brief". This year's showing of Worlds Of Ursula K. Le Guin, an exploration of the remarkable life and legacy of the late feminist author heralded as a 'world builder' and an 'architect of language', is an example of that.
"It was hard post-Covid to wait for films that were put on pause to emerge," says Yasmine. "I'm always on the lookout for special films, tracking other festivals, going through their programmes and often staying in direct contact with film-makers and production companies - some of whom reach out to us first. A wave of local filmmakers who are swarming onto the scene is also encouraging".
Special events spurred on by RADFF this year include a world premiere in Tauranga on 28 April for The Chodge, a documentary about a 2024 NZIA Waikato/Bay of Plenty Architecture Awards Winner, supported by a touring ADNZ Q&A. In Auckland only there will be a special screening of Ada: My Mother The Architect on Mother's Day, 11 May.