If you search in any dictionary the meaning of the word "house", you will find one main definition – a place for human habitation. But when does a house, no matter how big or small and where it may be located, becomes a home, and therefore a place of origin and a destination, a familiar and safe setting? That's essentially the question behind the documentary "The Human Shelter" by Boris Benjamin Bertram, on today at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF: NY) at New York's Cinépolis Chelsea.
The film opens in Kautokeino, Norway, where Elle Marja Eira, Sami nomad and artist, is filmed moving around a frozen landscape. It may be an isolated place, but, as the Sami reindeer herder interviewed in the documentary explains, living like this surrounded by nature means he can change house as the seasons change.
The scene then rapidly moves to New York, Arabat, Mauna Loa (disguised as Mars), Kampala, Tokyo, Lagos and Jökulheimar.
In a UNHCR camp we are invited in the humble dwellings of refugees, identical shelters that they have personalised adding fabrics on walls; inside the geodesic dome of the NASA Mars habitat, located on a remote volcano on the island of Hawaii, researchers finally feel at home when they realise they have explored all the spaces in the temporary structure fuctioning as their home, while a man in Kampala states he is extremely happy whenever he takes refuge in the shelter he has built in a tree.
At times filmmaker Boris Bertram creates juxtapositions: a young woman in Tokyo lives alone in her house that she has transformed in her photography laboratory, where, she explains, she transcends when she creates; in the same city a group of friends decide to share a single flat, that they dub "the geek house".
In a tiny beauty salon in a lagoon settlement in Lagos ladies are creating intricate hairstyles, while writer Andri Snær Magnason takes his daughters to see a remote shelter in Iceland and reveals he is worried about climate change, moaning the inexorable decline of the nearby glacier that meant home for his grandparents.
The director calls this film, shot over 18 months and featuring fascinating aerial images of landscapes and cities, "experimental and curious" and a "journey across all 4 four continents. A journey into a new landscape. An existential film on how we, as human beings, construct and tell the story about our home."
The result is poetical as the director disappears to let the people he meets in his journey speak and recount their personal stories. "Every location and scene in the film is supposed to surprise the audience," the director explains. "Every chapter has a shelter and a human description of 'home' as the central story."
As a result, the documentary becomes a conversation about the elemental and universal human need, but also a human right – the house as a shelter and a home.
"The Human Shelter" is also a journey through diversity, resilience and dignity: a man in a shelter in a refugee camp enthusiastically shows us his suits ready for when he may get a proper job; 13-year-old Iraqi Amira writes her poems about her community and the need for a shelter from a refugee camp outside Mosul, her words sounding like a prayer ("Home is a place in the whole world. Dear God, help me to be able to be with all the people"), while a young man in Lagos proudly shows us the collage of pictures of family members he has created on a wall in his house on the lagoon, a personal and colourful attempt at interior design.
In a way interior design comes into the documentary as it was sponsored by IKEA, but this film is definitely not an advert and the name of the Swedish corporation is never mentioned in the actual documentary (if only all sponsoring were as invisible as this one...).
While this film is also a postcard for architects, reminding them to design hospitable homes for real people, it is first and foremost a positive letter to all of us.
We do live in bleak times as around the world there are millions of homeless people, displaced refugees and migrants and our planet is in danger. But, by showing us the challenges different people living in extreme climatic conditions, temporary spaces, isolated environments or densely populated areas face every day, Bertram provides us with an optimistic message about human values, community, family and friends, nature and our shared home - planet Earth.
"The Human Shelter" by Boris Benjamin Bertram is on today and tomorrow at the Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West 23rd Street, New York, as part of the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF).
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