ILA BÊKA & LOUISE LEMOINE

"Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are two of the foremost architectural artists working today. Their films focus on the relationship of people and design, emphasising the presence of everyday life within some of the most iconic architectural projects of recent decades." Barbican Centre, London.

“Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are building a work at the crossroads of cinema, architecture and urbanism, questioning our ways of inhabiting the world with a poetic sense tinged with surrealism and a sometimes biting humor.” Le Monde

The complete work of Bêka & Lemoine has been acquired in 2016 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York for its permanent collection.

Video-artists, filmmakers, producers and publishers, Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine have been working together for the past 15 years mainly focusing their research on experimenting new narrative and cinematographic forms in relation to contemporary architecture and urban environment. Focusing their interest mainly on how the built environment shapes and influences our daily life, they have developed a very unique and personal approach which can be defined, in reference to French writer Georges Perec, as an "anthropology of the ordinary".

Presented by The New York Times as the "cult figures in the European architecture world", Bêka & Lemoine's work has been widely acclaimed as "a new form of criticism" (Mark) which "has deeply changed the way of looking at architecture" (Domus).

Selected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met) as one of the "Most exciting and critical design project of the year 2016", elected "Game Changers 2015" by Metropolis Magazine, selected as one of the "100 most talented personalities of 2017" by Icon Design, in 2016 they have been selected among the participants of Mextropoli in Mexico City.

Their films have been widely presented in major biennials and international cultural events such as The Venice Architecture Biennale (2008, 2010, 2014), The Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016, the Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, Performa 17 in New-York, among many others. Their films are also frequently exhibited in some of the most prestigious museums and international cultural institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New-York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, the Barbican Centre in London, the CAPC museum of contemporary art in Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, or the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montréal, Canada.

Bêka & Lemoine's films have also largely been selected and awarded by some major film festivals such as Cannes Films Festival, (Cannes), Mostra del Cinema di Venezia (Venice), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen), DocAviv (Tel Aviv), Chicago International Film Festival (Chicago), Torino Film Festival (Turin), among many others.

Bêka & Lemoine are regularly invited to lecture in some important universities: GSD / Harvard University (USA), GSAPP / Columbia University (New-York, USA), AAP / Cornell University (USA), AA / Architectural Association School of Architecture (London, UK), Bartlett School of Architecture / UCL (London, UK).

In 2018 Bêka & Lemoine have been laureate of Villa Kujoyama, French residency program for artists in Japan. In 2019 Ila Bêka has been laureate Italian Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine have been running for two years the master studio Diploma 16 at AA School in London and also been invited as guest professors at GSAPP / Columbia University (New York) for the New-York/Paris Program, at The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design in Delft (Netherlands), at School of Architecture of the University of Navarra, at Domaine du Boisbuchet (France) and at HEAD in Geneva (Switzerland).
They are currently teaching for master students at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Switzerland).

"Our approach to filmmaking in relation to architecture, since our first film 20 years ago, has been the one of transmitting an idea of space through the lived and embodied experiences of people."
Bêka & Lemoine

FILMOGRAPHY

FILMOGRAPHY

  • Non Fiction
  • Big Ears Listen With Feet, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (93 min)
  • Oslavia, The Cave od the Past Future, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (17 min)
  • Tokyo Ride, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (90 min)
  • Homo Urbanus, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (10 x 55 min)
  • Butohouse, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (34 min)
  • Moriyama-San, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (63 min)
  • Selling Dreams, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (25+12 min)
  • Spiriti, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (15x3 min)
  • Voyage autour de la Lune, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (75 min)
  • The Infinite Happiness, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (85 min)
  • Barbicania, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (90 min)
  • 24 Heures sur Place, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (90 min)
  • L'expérience du vide, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (45 min)
  • La Maddalena Chair, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (25 min)
  • La Maddalena, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (12 min)
  • 25bis, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (46 min)
  • Living Architectures Zip, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (60 min)
  • Gehry's Vertigo, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (48 min)
  • Xmas Meier, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (51 min)
  • Inside Piano / The little Beaubourg, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (26 min)
  • Inside Piano / The Submarine, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (39 min)
  • Inside Piano / The power of silence, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (34 min)
  • Pomerol, Herzog & de Meuron, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (51 min)
  • Koolhaas Houselife, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (58 min)
  • Documentaries
  • Alfred, une nuit vénitienne, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (70 min)
  • A Balare/Frassinetti, by Ila Bêka (62 min)
  • A Balare/Pilastro, by Ila Bêka (61 min)
  • A Balare/Italicus, by Ila Bêka (60 min)
  • La danza dell'amore, by Ila Bêka (23 min)
  • Mattarello d'oro, by Ila Bêka (20 min)
  • Il dubbio dell'amore, by Ila Bêka (15 min)
  • Passero sublime, by Ila Bêka (7 min)
  • Mariano, by Ila Bêka (6.26 min)
  • L'uomo dei numeri, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Il testamento della memoria, by Ila Bêka (series of 20 films, 42min),
  • Videos
  • Monsieur Pelletret, by Ila Bêka (7 min)
  • Madame Pelletret, by Ila Bêka (4 min)
  • Salome & the seven heads, by Ila Bêka (6 min)
  • Mind Scraping, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Pigeons, by Ila Bêka (7.33 min)
  • Reminiscenza Onirica, by Ila Bêka (5min)
  • The end of the dream, by Ila Bêka (5.58 min)
  • Too much noises, by Ila Bêka (4 min)
  • Birding, by Ila Bêka (2 min)
  • The Prophet, by Ila Bêka (4.08 min)
  • Radio Maria, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Guadalupe, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (1.30 min)
  • Ascension, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (2.36 min)
  • The leaf blower, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (2.10 min)
  • Gynécée,  by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (1.39 min)
  • The spiral mouth, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (1.43 min)
  • Carmine, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (1.36 min)
  • Curtain, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (4.32 min)
  • Sound of Space, by Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine (different pieces)
  • Quodlibet/The apartment, by Ila Bêka (12.25 min)
  • Feature Films - Fiction
  • Quodlibet, by Ila Bêka (84 min). Official Selection at the International Film Festival of Locarno.
  • Short Films - Fiction
  • I have seen my mother dancing in the clouds, by Ila Bêka (6 min). Grand Prix: Torino Film Festival. Séléction Officielle della Mostra del Cinema di Venezia. Séléction aux Oscars, par l'Academy Awards de Los Angeles
  • Buongiorno, by Melo Prino (aka Ila bêka) (5 min). Grand Prix: Festival Interfilm de Berlin, Festival de Annecy, Festival de Capalbio, Premio Troisi de Naples, Maremetraggio de Trieste. Prix Féderation Cinémas d'Essai, Mention au Nastri d'Argento.
  • Buonasera, by Melo Prino (aka Ila bêka) (5 min).
  • Buonanotte, by Melo Prino (aka Ila bêka) (5 min).
  • In Utero, by Ila Bêka (11 min). Jameson Short Film Awards du Meilleur court-métrage italien. Sélection Officielle à la Semaine de la Critique de Cannes. Prix Arcadi, Séléction Officielle du Festival du court-métrage de Clermont Ferrand.
  • Adriano e Caterina, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Appuntamento a Belleville, by Melo Prino (aka Ila bêka) (5 min)
  • Ventre, by Melo Prino (aka Ila bêka) (6 min). Prix du Festival del Cinema d'Arte di Bergamo.
  • Contagio, by Melo Prino(aka Ila bêka) (6 min)
  • Little Bird, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Requiem, by Ila Bêka (7 min)
  • Crash, by Ila Bêka (4 min)
  • The last taxi, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • The ambush, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Della paura di morire, by Ila Bêka (1.40 min)
  • The picture, by Ila Bêka (5 min)
  • Millimetraggi
  • Millimetraggi, a series of 168 very short-films (less than 3 min). Gran Prix: Festival du Film Très Court de Paris, Festival Maremetraggio-Oscar du court-metrage italien de Trieste (Italie), Festival Premio Massimo Troisi de Naples (Italie). Prix Arcadi Paris.
  • Fragments
  • Fragments, a collection of more than 500 vidéo-haîkus
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OUR APPROACH

The whole Bêka & Lemoine Filmography has entirely been auto-produced by ourselves.



We have made the choice to become ourselves publishers and distributors to keep our independence from the beginning to the end of this experimental work. This financial constraint is also the key of this project's freedom.

Buying our films you will actively contribute to sustain the possibility of an artistic production free of the market pressure and the major publishing and distributing system that weaken so much the author's position.

Thank you, Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine