BUILDINGS TELL STORIES

“Bread doesn’t help much if you don’t know how to write the word for bread.”
... Join us today for a closer look with its director at the concept behind the short film on Giancarlo Mazzanti´s Parque Biblioteca España in Medellín, Columbia  - and enjoy them in full length during your visit in the exhibition!


Dos gorras y una casa

“This library is sacred,” says the fireman, Olafo. We are looking down a steep slope, our eyes glance over tin roofs and across toward those three thick black blocks. A bold, defiant castle in a jungle of houses. “And so what do the people here think?” I ask Olafo. “Well, mostly about God and the family.” Saintly comments tend to make me nervous, I prefer facts. Fact is, for example, that a library has been built here in the middle of a socially disadvantaged area.
The thing looks bulky, inside it’s being painted, outside the terrace is being rebuilt after only five years of use? I can’t get comfort- able in the library, it’s loud, I can’t concentrate.
“But don’t you need bread rather than books?” I ask. Olafo cannot bring himself to say a critical word: “Bread doesn’t help much if you don’t know how to write the word for bread.” No matter who you ask, everyone loves the library: Abuela Amelia is like a cheeky kid inside the body of a seventy-eight-year-old woman, she laughs nonstop about herself and about life and says she has friends here; the overseer Carlos likes to read religious books and conspiracy theories; Johnny the break- dancer teaches the children to dance; the guy with his bull terrier comes here to read guides on training dogs.
Outside on the terrace two students are having a smooch; the dog is back, the one who comes here every day to look down into the valley or up into the sun. And sometimes it rains. But that doesn’t bother the window cleaner. He loves cleaning windows in the rain.
A few weeks later I’ve fallen in love with the whole neighborhood, I’ve got used to the noise in the library, and I choose not to show its building works and its snags. This library is sacred and that’s a fact.

Director / Editor: Youdid Kahveci
Camera: Carlos Andrés López Tobón
Project: Parque Biblioteca España, Medellín, Columbia, 2005–2007
Architect: Giancarlo Mazzanti


"Dos gorras y una casa" is one of the 15 short films, exploring the function and consequences of the architecture and the buildings on local people, are on offer as part of the exhibition Culture:City, produced especially by independent directors - students and graduates of the Berlin Film School DFFB - on the occasion. These young filmmakers have visited the actual buildings world wide and have condensed their impressions onto films that can be called up from the tablet computer in the exhibition in front of every model or be viewed in a small cinema that has been installed at the end of the show.