Jorge Gorostiza

Jorge Gorostiza

WHEN CINEMA IS AHEAD OF ARCHITECTURE:

VISIONARY PROJECTS ON THE SCREEN

It makes no sense to think that the screens are the place where we can see what will happen in the future. Science fiction cinema, just as literary science fiction, uses the future to explain and analyse the situation in which it was conceived. The architecture and the cities shown in the films that took place in a future that has already passed, such as Just Imagine, which took place in 1980, are not the ones that really existed, but this does not prevent their morphology from being fundamental to understanding the moment when they were shot.

Things to Come, based on a novel by the visionary H. G. Wells, warns about the dangers of World War II which would break out three years after its premiere, showing a destroyed planet full of the always suggestive ruins of the 20th century buildings, but also proposes a new megacity for the year 2036, which, unlike the one proposed by Fritz Lang for 2027 in his Metropolis, is completely underground, like The Tunnel, a city where, as an old man tells a little girl, windows are no longer necessary, a mixture of dystopia and utopia that creates a unique film. We must not forget that Things to Come is directed by a great stage professional, the first "production designer", William Cameron Menzies; in it, besides the architecture and the city of the future, we can enjoy a crucial sequence: the construction of the underground metropolis, due to the conjunction of László Moholy-Nagy (don't miss his documentary Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen) and the composer Arthur Bliss, and which must be enjoyed by setting oneself in the thirties of the last century, but without forgetting that some catastrophe can always loom.

More information about the architect Jorge Gorostiza in his blog ARQUITECTURA+CINE+CIUDAD.