City21: Multiple Perspectives on Urban Futures

http://city21.info/
This film production is designed to be a unique cinematic journey into the various experimental forms that will influence and shape the 21st Century City.

The underlying quest of the filmmakers is to reframe the conventional and uninspiring visions of the urban future with an unprecedented combination of fresh, invigorating, sustainable, economically viable, and life enhancing concepts.

Below are some of the themes we have explored in an effort to loosen the geometric and economic grip on the urban imagination:

-The Sacred Origins of the City: Arnold Toynbee on the origin of Civilization/City Plans through time.

-Magic Architecture: The intentional eco-community of Damanhur, Italy.

-Utopia Imagination: Poetry and Architecture/The Open City Project
in Ritoque, Chile.

-Regenerative Design: Nature and Architecture, the transformation of
the Biosphere2 Project into Eco-Village design.

-Nation State Energy Independence: The White Gold of the North/Renewable energy in Iceland.

-The City as Memory Theater: mythic design wisdom transmitted through the generations.

-The Creative Green City: The Lighthouse Project in Glasgow.

-Creating Eco-Villages--The Findhorn Experiment in Scotland

-Cities and Time—The Long Now perspective with Stewart Brand

While the filmmakers have been enormously pleased with the success of our previous documentary: Ecological Design: Inventing the Future.
We are convinced that powerfully destructive forces like: over-population, unrelenting urban sprawl, and generic design programs, threaten the promising conceptual breakthrough of recent times.


A debilitating resignation about these pressures, often expressed in jaded phrases like:you cant fight City Hall makes it imperative that alternative and eminently achievable visions of the future be known to as many people as possible. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, otherwise we will get the cities we deserve.

This quest is an example of heuristic filmmaking in search of a magic synthesis that inspires new insights and actions in support of making the World a more livable place for the children of all the species on planet Earth.....
Christopher Zelov