Wednesday, May 23 // 8:30pm

Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner (2008, NR)
Directed by Murray Grigor, Infinite Space 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 twentieth century. Attendees will also enjoy pre-screening music by The Bullgoose Loonies at 7:30pm.

Wednesday, April 18 // 8pm

Unfinished Spaces (2011, NR)
Directed by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, Unfinished Spaces follows three young, visionary architects commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. However, revolution quickly became a reality, and construction was halted while the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying and Castro invites the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.

Wednesday, March 21 / / 7:30pm

The Pruitt Igoe Myth (2010, NR)
Directed by Chad Freidrichs, the film tells the story of the wholesale changes that took place in the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis. At the film’s historical center is an analysis of the massive impact of the 1949 Housing Act, which built Pruitt-Igoe and other high-rise public housing of the Fifties and Sixties.

Presented with the Mid Tex Mod chapter of Docomomo US in collaboration with Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project, put on by Ballet Austin.

In collaboration with Ballet Austin’s Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project, AMOA-Arthouse and the Mid Tex Mod chapter of Docomomo US present a discussion following the screening of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth on the roof deck of the Jones Center. Please join us for the film and the discussion afterwards featuring Andrew Busch, Fred L. McGhee and Elizabeth Mueller. The panelists will speak about the film in conjunction to their professional knowledge and the city of Austin.

About the panelists:

Andrew Busch has a PhD from the Department of American Studies at UT-Austin and currently teaches at St. Edward’s. He has written about Austin and Central Texas from an interdisciplinary urban history perspective, focusing on Austin’s growth, the technology sector, environmentalism, and race. Classes taught include topics related to urban development in the US from colonial period to the present, with an emphasis on labor, race, and regional urban characteristics. Busch has written about urban renewal, the spectacular failings of the Open Housing Initiative in Austin, and segregation in general, and also can speak to the 1928 City Plan (whose principle function was to determine land uses and also to institute segregation), public housing and suburbanization in Austin.

Fred L. McGhee is an anthropologist, diver, and greenbuilder.   A specialist in the maritime archaeology and history of the African Diaspora, he has conducted research in the Caribbean and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the mainland United States, particularly Texas.  He is also a public housing anthropologist with over sixteen years of participant observation and community activism in in Austin, Houston, Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, Honolulu and elsewhere.  From 1999 to 2000 he served as the last Mike Hogg Fellow with the Urban Issues Program at UT Austin.

Elizabeth Mueller is an Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning at UT Austin. She is primarily interested in questions of social equity in cities and regions. She teaches courses on city planning history and planning theory, affordable housing policy, community development, urban politics and qualitative research methods. Her research focuses on social and political inclusion in cities, and how city planning and development policies shape the quality of life and opportunities available to historically vulnerable residents and communities. Her current work focuses on these topics through investigation of the tensions between the goals and policies of local planning agencies and local housing agencies, as seen in current thinking about strategies for building sustainable cities. She previously taught at the New School for Social Research in NYC.