Empathy For Concrete Things

Five visual artists, together with the filmmaker, examine past and present attitudes towards their homes based on their experiences living and working in Soviet-era concrete, panel-block apartments. Combining compelling personal narrative with experimental research on the history of twentieth-century art and architecture, the film creates a contemporary aesthetic of panel-block mass housing using animation—original watercolors put into motion by stop-motion techniques and digital animation. As global and personal histories interweave, the film explores notions of moral and political responsibility as evinced in postsocialist urban spaces. Empathy for Concrete Things thus considers how architecture can become both a site of utopian fantasy, and a mechanism through which major transformations shaped the history of the twentieth century. As former postsocialist countries are thrust into, or hang on the edge of new humanitarian and political crises, the film expresses its own rallying cry against destruction, all from the vantage point of concrete, panel-block apartments.

Please note: An exhibition copy of the film can be made available in any desired format, including digital file, Blu-Ray, or DCP.