The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) New York’s South Asian Promises An Unprecedented Cinematic Showcase

The Architecture & Design Film Festival🙈 (ADFF), initiated in New York, will be held held in Mumbai. The South Asian premiere of the film festival will pivot along the storytelling mediums of design, architecture and cinema. ADFF:STIR Mumbai is presented by STIR alongside Kyle Bergman, Director and Founder, ADFF, and in the company of Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It will take place from January 10 - 12, 2025, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai. The event will foster cross-cultural dialogue, engaging with the wider public and contributing to a nuanced understanding of the changing paradigms of creative production in the region and beyond.

൩ADFF:STIR Mumbai is staged to be the first-ever cross-disciplinary peek into the creative fields in an inclusive format designed to create tangible intersections and engagement with creatives and enthusiasts alike. Over 20 international films dedicated to architecture and design are scheduled to be screened during the festival, some marking their debut screenings in South Asia through the event. To further ensure that the festival is contextualised for its diverse audience, globally renowned architects and designers will present their response to a curatorial brief—Frame of Reference—through site-specific installations at the Pavilion Park. Presented by JSW, the park and the works on display are poised to transport visitors into different realms, much like entering the world of a film. Additionally, a meticulously curated public programme is set to facilitate wider perspectives and intimate encounters through book readings, crits, performances, workshops and a talks schedule in a novel format, ~log(ue).

“At STIR, the goal has always been to underscore the interdependent nature of the creative fields across visual culture🌌, performance arts, design and architecture. Architecture is influenced by and influences other disciplines, and among them, film is a prime example. Offering a setting for telling stories and by itself being a storytelling medium, architecture is intrinsically connected to the cinematic realm. Both architecture and film shape our conscious and social collective and in turn fuel cultural discourse. Conduits such as the ADFF:STIR festival merely bring this fundamental relationship to the fore, nurturing the interconnections between the two, offering fodder for the intellect as well as our imagination”, shares Amit Gupta, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, STIR.

The films: Architecture and Design framed

☂Through different screenings spread over three public days and a special Red Carpet Premiere Night on January 9, the festival will allow viewers a unique frame of reference into the ethos of what drives architecture and allied creative endeavours. Part of a carefully curated and sourced lineup, the films, spanning varied regions on the map, will frame new ways of ways of seeing and being, providing valuable insights into the human aspects of design, lives of famous designers, principles that shape our built world, and the lived realities and aspirations of people in contemporary times.

This is Not a House (2023), is the highlight which shows the details the construction of the unique Hill House in Montecito designed by Robin Donaldson of Donaldson+Partners. It will be screened during the red carpet premiere; and a special restored and remastered 20th-anniversary screening of the Oscar-nominated film My Architect, a documentary about American architect Louis Kahn by his son Nathaniel Kahn. Screenings will also delve into other creative fields with Fashion Reimagined (2022) offering a peek into the possibilities for a sustainable transformation in fashion design; Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story (2023) that narrates the life and impact of the influential architect who propagated modernist thinking and established a corporate design aesthetic at IBM; and Biocentrics (2022) that explores how nature could be a model for transforming our world. With a special focus on South Asian perspectives, The Promise: Architect BV Doshi (2023) will showcase the legacy of the master Indian architect. There will also be screenings of The Genius of Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa (2023) which offers insights into the work of the Sri Lankan architect, most well known for disseminating the tenets of Tropical Modernism. Adding to the canon of modernist architecture that has often celebrated the lone genius of the male architect, E.1027 - Eileen Gray and The House by the Sea𒁃 (2024) subversively tells the story of the construction and eventual destruction of a villa in the south of France, designed by the Irish architect.

ღ“The idea has always been to showcase the best films possible for any edition of ADFF. Building on that, certain themes emerged for the South Asian premiere. While spotlighting critical voices from the region, the films span topics from global climate change concerns to the role of women in architecture,” shares Kyle Bergman, Director, and Founder, ADFF.

JSW Pavilion Park: Frames of Reference

♔The Open Air Plaza and the Experimental Garden at the NCPA form the centre for the vibrant Pavilion Park, supported by JSW, that will be the hub of public interaction during the three public days, adding a new layer to the multifaceted affair that is ADFF:STIR Mumbai. An exclusively curated array of immersive installations will add to how the public perceives and enacts this intersection of film and design beyond the screen. Conceived by influential designers and architects from India and beyond in collaboration with leading material and installation partners, the pavilions offer groundbreaking, innovative responses to a specific curatorial brief devised by the curators at STIR. The site-specific responses are further aimed at facilitating an inclusive space enabling a multiplicity of dialogues, not limited to one way of seeing.

ꦿThe ‘Frames of Reference’ will be displayed for the duration of the festival, allowing visitors to relax between screenings and talks while becoming points of conversation themselves. A diverse range of designers are slated to bring their unique voices to the space, including Matharoo Associates and reD Architects supported by Artize; SPASM Design supported by Jaipur Rugs and FCML; UHA London supported by Saraf Foundation; SHROFFLEóN in partnership with Jindal Stainless; Vibhor Sogani; Tania and Sandeep Khosla; Manish Gulati and Shruti Gupte in partnership with ICA Pidilite; Matthew and Ghosh Architects; LOCO Design; and Supraja Rao in collaboration with Shabnam Gupta, Apoorva Shroff, Quirk Studio and Swanzal Kak Kapoor, with the production support of Gurugram-based FTS By Sharmilee.

ꦬ“The four tenets shaping the debut edition of ADFF:STIR Mumbai—films, ~log(ue), the pavilion park and special projects—make visible how the built environment choreographs and often governs our ways of knowing, being and doing. They have been handpicked to create cross-cultural dialogue and much-needed interdisciplinary contamination that is tangible and palpable. Through these, we hope to engage the wider public with architecture and design more deeply, and potentially contribute to the shifting paradigms of creative production in the region,” states Samta Nadeem, Festival Curator and Curatorial Director at STIR.

A dynamic talks programme: Framing ~log(ue) and log/ लोग

🐼The metadisciplinary discourse at the festival will be further amplified with STIR’s unique talks programme, ~log(ue). Under the moniker, STIR bridges people (log/ लोग) and discourse (~logues) to stage creative encounters between top speakers from the worlds of art, architecture, design, fashion, films and more. Combining a dynamic and experimental approach in a new avatar for ADFF, STIR kindles visitors with four distinct methods of unfolding conversations, wherein the audience too supersedes peripheral participation by shaping the discussion through some of the interactive formats. Extended under the ~log(ue) umbrella, analogue encounters across the festival site through performances, crits, readings, workshops and more will foster a sense of community and belonging.

♚Speakers will include notable names such as filmmakers and influential theatre personalities including Hansal Mehta, Anand Gandhi, Dar Gai, Gauri Shinde, Megha Ramaswamy, Avijit Mukul Kishore and Bruce Guthrie; thought leaders Rohit Chawla, Swati Bhattacharya and Ranjit Hoskote; architects Sameep Padora of sP+a, Khushnu Hoof, Principal of Studio Sangath, Shimul Javeri Kadri, conservationist Abha Narain Lambah, Ayaz Basrai of Busride Studio, Akshat Bhatt from Architecture Discipline and artist/ architect Vishal Dar; curators from some of the foremost museums in the world including Martino Stierli from MoMA and Meneesha Kellay, Senior Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; academics such as Kaiwan Mehta, Dean of Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, and Rohan Shivkumar, Dean of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA); artists and visionaries including Dayanita Singh, Thukral & Tagra and Gaurav Ogale; entrepreneurs and philanthropists Sangita Jindal and Tarini Jindal Handa from JSW, along with Radha Goenka of RPG Foundation; curator; and Creative Director, Pavitra Rajaram.

Special Projects

🍰Expanding the curatorial dimension of the event, STIR brings various special projects into the equation, ensuring a packed weekend for everyone to enjoy. Originally commissioned by RIBA in London and supported in Mumbai by the British Council, The Architect has Left the Building by architectural photographer and filmmaker, Jim Stephenson, is a vital part of the programme. The project, a film installation by Stephenson, Simon James and and Sofia Smith, questions how architecture is used and its spaces occupied after the architect leaves and the publicity shots are done. Apart from the exhibition, Stephenson along with James will invite local photographers and filmmakers in the city to build on the narrative of his original exhibition, creating their own scenes that will be included in a remixed version of the original project. Also in the fold is a special collaboration between New York-based architect Suchi Reddy and Asian Paints, Chromacosm, celebrating the launch of the world's largest paint colour library by the multinational giant. The project will see a constellation of over 2000 colours come together and simultaneously fade to black through a 'forest of reeds', elevating the two-dimensionality of screen pixels and paints into an immersive, three-dimensional experience.

♏Platforming a diverse array of stories from around the world, not only about how architecture and design are produced but also how they are instrumental in the way we conduct our lives, ADFF:STIR Mumbai promises to be a sensorial extravaganza and will open up avenues to expand the creative community and economy in the region and beyond.