hochhaus_home





Hochhaus_logo

Laura Engelhardt

BAUANGRIFF, 7‘20 min., 2015

The short essay documentary 突击建房 – Construction Assault examines the building and demolition cycles in Beijing’s periphery. It draws upon the phenomena of ‘tuji jianfang’ (construction assault), a local building practice in which houses get built just to be demolished. The film shifts between the vast and continuously changing outskirts of Beijing and the advertising screens of the city centre.

 

HOME ON DISPLAY, 14 min., 2014

in cooperation with Nina Gschlößl

Home on Display examines the construction of homes for China’s New Rich: a contemplation on the desire and search for an ideal home and the growing commercialisation of this process.

 

AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS DER NACHBARSCHAFT, 27 min., 2019

Over the course of 2 years, I film from the window of my flat in Berlin Alt-Treptow the view of our courtyard. I document the construction process of a new residential building and daily scenes amidst Berlin‘s urban development and displacement.

The documentary images are superimposed by a text collage which is inspired by the biography of my neighbour. She was born in the house from which I film in 1964, when Alt-Treptow still belonged to the former GDR.

A filmic narration of urban and bodily conditions.

 

AUFTRITT UND ABGANG VON MASCHA B., 14 min., 2020

Entrance and Exit of Mascha B. follows a young woman through a digital transformation process.

In the premises of a big architectural visualization company, delicate operations give rise to a promotional image: Mascha B. gets 3D-scanned, processed and retouched digitally. A virtual office room is furnished and inhabited by Mascha B. and digital colleagues. The final rendering process is accompanied by the aria from the 1881 fantastic opera „The Tales of Hoffmann“, in which the hero hopelessly falls in love with the mechanical puppet Olympia.

Laura Engelhardt (born 1988 in Bremen) studied Architecture and Fine Arts in London, Stuttgart and Berlin and is currently completing the postgraduate program in film at the Academy for Media Arts Cologne. Her films examine built and imagined architectures, urban spaces and the fragile relation between the human body and its environment. Her work is shown internationally in exhibitions and festivals, her short film Bauangriff has been awarded several prices. Laura lives and works as a filmmaker and artist in Cologne and Berlin.