Running from October 9 to 12, the festival will bring a curated mini four-day festival to Cinema Paradiso.
Wānaka audiences can experience a selection of the 2025 festival’s most celebrated titles from one of the largest architecture and design film festivals in the world.
Now in its 14th year, the festival has become one of the largest architecture and design film festivals in the world and organisers have curated a programme for Wānaka audiences.
Founded in 2012, the Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival has become a key cultural event in Aotearoa New Zealand and is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Organisers said they had received a lot of interest online from the Wānaka community that they want to see our films at their local cinema.
The target audience for the film festival are people whose work or interests overlap with architecture, design, creativity, culture and our built environment.
The festival would give locals the chance to experience world-class documentary films about architecture, design and creativity that they wouldn’t normally see on the big screen.
Movies on show for the festival are:
• E.1027 — EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA — OCTOBER 9, 7PM Eileen Gray’s villa, E.1027, on the C-te d’Azur is considered a milestone in architectural history. Enjoy a cinematic journey into the mind of Eileen Gray, offering a story about the power of female expression and men’s desire to control it.
• SCHINDLER SPACE ARCHITECT — OCTOBER 10, 7PM A true original, Austrian-born and educated R.M. Schindler laid the foundation for what is now known as the Californian style of indoor-outdoor living. This documentary explores the bohemian genius of the highly acclaimed Schindler House in Los Angeles, investigating Schindler’s philosophy of Space Architecture, while also raising questions about domestic architecture as a living entity that can shape culture and humanity.
• SITTING STILL — OCTOBER 11, 4.30PM Get inside the mind of distinguished artist, scholar, author, and one of the most renowned and significant landscape architects practising in the world today, Laurie Olin, whose concerns have defined his life’s work: urbanisation, a lost connection to nature, economic marginalisation, and the grave necessity of humanity in design. In a time when global values increasingly reflect profit over people, Olin’s vision has always been to create a more democratic and egalitarian society through healthy, shared public space.
• ARTHUR ERICKSON: BEAUTY BETWEEN THE LINES — OCTOBER 12, 4.30PM Known for his visionary designs and groundbreaking architectural philosophy, Erickson’s work profoundly shaped the modernist landscape as one of the 20th century’s most captivating architects. Through intimate interviews, archival footage and a look at his most famous creations, the film reveals the delicate balance Erickson maintained between his creative genius and the challenges of his personal life, reflecting on the human experience of creativity, ambition and the price of greatness.
