Designed Beings

An award-winning wordless documentary that explores the architecture of the then new St. Peter's Seminary which is now seen as one of the most important post-war buildings in the United Kingdom. The film was made in celebration after architect Jack Coia was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1969. Winner of the Medalla de Bronce at the Fifth Union of International Architects Festival in Madrid (1975).

Documentary on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

All great art engages in a dialogue with the past. Architecture is no exception, as this film shows in its examination of the legacy of Sir John Soane (1753-1837), an English architect of rare genius whose influence on a generation of America's foremost architects is profound.

The screen legend conducts a personal tour of the great city that shaped him.

Infinite Space, a documentary feature film, traces the lifelong quest of visionary genius John Lautner to create “architecture that has no beginning and no end.” It is the story of brilliance and of a complicated life – and the most sensual architecture of the 20th century.

The life and work of the Scottish architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Charles Gwathmey has held steadfast to the spirit of modernism in his architecture from the day he successfully built his parents' home in 1967 based on the theories of Le Corbusier and American individualism. Avoiding the nostalgia of fashionable postmodernism throughout the eighties, Gwathmey partnered with Robert Siegel, and their firm continues to create innovative houses, corporate, institutional and university buildings across America. This documentary ranges from the deMenil villa on the dunes of Easthampton to their Guggenheim Museum addition. We hear from such leading architects as Philip Johnson and Peter Eisenman, and from filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who describes how a journey through a Gwathmey Siegel house creates the same sense of drama as a well-made movie.

A panorama of the Clyde, from Biggar to Brodick, with Billy Connolly as your guide. Directed by Murray Grigor for the Films of Scotland Committee.

Billy Connolly was, in the 1970s, a sort of Scottish Lenny Bruce, who, with devastating humour, sliced through the hypocrisies he perceived. This 1976 documentary follows the singer-comic during his 1975 Irish tour. Made in a cinema verité fashion, the performer appears to be completely unaware of the presence of the camera in his off-stage and backstage moments.

Overview of Vorticism, a radical art movement of the early 20th Century.

In the twilight years of the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese filmmaker slowly becoming blind tours the country screening her last film to peasants. In it, the woman imagines two "alien" lovers walking from end-to-end along the Great Wall to join each other in the middle, one last time. This documentary is an adaptation of Ulay and Marina Abramovic's final collaborative project, the 1988 performance "The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk."

A study of the works of the Scottish architect Robert Adam.

The story of Harris Tweed and its Hebridean homeland.

A portrait of Edinburgh, accompanied by the Picturesque notes of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1878.

A James-Bond type fiction film about an evil woman's plans to 'hi-jack' the New Town of Cumbernauld. Sponsored by Cumbernauld Development Corporation, this film is an original take on the 'promotional' films produced for Scotland's New Towns during the 1970s.

Artist Eduardo Paolozzi explores idiosyncratic aspects of the culture and history of Malta in this unique experimental tourist film.