Slaughterhouses of Modernity

The quasi-fascist architecture of Francisco Salamone’s slaughterhouses in the Argentine pampas, the utopian buildings by Freddy Mamani Silvestre in El Alto, Bolivia, and the restorative “City Palace” in Berlin are the cornerstones of an analytical documentary film that explores the dual character of architectural modernism in the field of tension between avant-garde and political propaganda. Heinz Emigholz returns with an alternately mournful and sly treatise on how the presence—and, in some cases, absence—of municipal and communal building architecture is inseparable from capitalist ideology. The film demonstrates the effect of capital on public spaces, where creation and destruction go hand in hand, and as always, Emigholz makes the journey one of intellectual force and cinematic beauty.