This autumn, Architecture on Film, a collaboration between De Cinema and the VAi, is exploring how we relate to the ground; how we shape, alter and deplete landscapes, and how these interventions reshape the environment we inhabit. Four films examine how architecture and human interventions relate to geological, ecological and temporal processes that extend far beyond us. Discover the autumn programme!
Architecture on Film this autumn explores how human intervention shapes, transforms and strains landscapes, and what traces this activity leaves behind in our living environment.
METABOLIC WALL highlights the temporary nature of architecture as a living and transient process. LAST AND FIRST MEN, by contrast, focuses on the monuments we leave behind and on a future in which they are the sole witnesses to a vanished humanity. In SHIFTING BASELINES, the focus is on the tension between Elon Musk’s space exploration ambitions and the natural environment that must make way for new technologies, whilst AGATHA’S ALMANAC quietly observes a way of life that is slowly fading from view, in which people, land and the seasons are inextricably linked.
The four films situate architecture and human interventions within geological, ecological and temporal processes that extend far beyond us. Some structures wither away and landscapes shift, whilst other interventions cause lasting or irreversible changes. What does it mean to shape a world, and what does it mean to leave our mark on it?
October
AGATHA'S ALMANAC + METABOLIC WALL
06.10.2026 (with intro) + 20.10.2026
November
SHIFTING BASELINES
03.11.2026 (with intro) + 17.11.2026
December
LAST AND FIRST MEN
01.12.2026 (with intro) + 15.12.2026
De Cinema
Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4
Antwerp
Architecture on Film is a monthly film series by De Cinema and the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi), bringing together two complementary areas of expertise: that of a unique cinema with a strong focus on film heritage and new voices, and that of an institute that explores architecture, design and heritage from a broad social and cultural perspective.
Don’t expect a conventional architecture film series. Architecture on Film presents a distinctive and carefully curated programme in which film and architecture intersect. From architecture and urbanism to heritage, landscape, housing, politics and social relations, each film explores a different way in which our surroundings are designed, used and experienced.
The selection, curated by Joyce Palmers (de Cinema) and Hülya Ertas (VAi), deliberately looks beyond architecture as an object or design, exploring what the built environment can tell us about the world we live in. In doing so, the series creates space for inquiry, encounter and dialogue; between past and future, different cultures and perspectives, and the people and places around us.
From October to May, a new film is presented each month. On the first Tuesday of the month, the film is introduced by the programmer and an external expert, who brings an additional perspective to the film. A second screening takes place on the third Tuesday of each month, without an introduction. Films are always screened in their original language with English subtitles; introductions are in English.
