Pantalla Pavelló | Architecture in the Family: The Mies van der Rohes by Sabine Gisiger

On the first Mondays of the summer months, we will be able to enjoy a new edition of the open-air cinema programme in which films are projected directly on the travertine wall.
A programme started in 2016 that already has a consolidated audience that enjoys a different kind of cinema accompanied by a presentation and a space for conversation to contextualise each of the films in the relationship between the built space, its limits and borders, and the inhabitants who reside in it.

Pantalla Pavelló presents three films that delve into the personal exploration of sons and daughters of internationally renowned architects of the 20th century:

Denise Zmekhol and Roger Zmekhol.

Georgia van der Rohe and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Stephen, Peter and Paul Böhms and Gottfried Böhms.

Architects with a strong and unique personality often inspire their children to follow in their creative footsteps.

In doing so, we find the dual desire to be like the father and to be critical and independent from him.

These three films present universal feelings that have given life to some of the most important architectural constructions of the last century and that have contributed to the most debate.

A debate that is also introduced into personal life because it affects it fully.

Through buildings, letters and memories, we discover personalities, conflicts, and the need for parents and children to assert themselves in their respective individualities despite the mutual respect they feel for each other.

The first film of the series is The Mies van der Rohes by Sabine Gisiger:

In the dramatic first half of the 20th century, when dream and trauma are so close together, almost all the possibilities of modern existence are played out. How to live, how to love? For women, these questions are posed differently.

The women around the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – his wife Ada, his three daughters Georgia, Marianne and Waltraut and his partner Lilly Reich – seize the opportunities of the new age, but also experience the restrictions of old patterns. When Mies emigrates to the USA in 1938, they struggle on their own through the barbarism of the Nazi era and the war. Their lives remain dominated by their absent husband, father and lover. This is told by the eldest daughter, Georgia van der Rohe, dancer and actress. The film brings her to life in fictional interviews based exclusively on authentic statements.

“THE MIES VAN DER ROHES” is a stirring family history and creates a moral portrait of the modern age with private, unpublished and long forgotten films, pictures and documents – from a female perspective.

Film file

Title: The Mies van der Rohes

Director: Sabine Gisiger

Year: 2022

Timing: 95′

Place: Switzerland

Buy your tickets here.