Dinner and a Movie— Playtime

The AIA East Bay’s Regional Urban Design Committee invites you to “Dinner and a Movie” on Wednesday, June 25 at 5:30pm.

The featured movie is Playtime by Jacques Tati. Jacques Tati's "sequel" to Mon Oncle finds Monsieur Hulot and a group of tourists wandering, baffled and hopeful, through a modernist and impersonal Paris. Played out as a long visual pun, we observe the hapless travelers move through grand yet cold spaces as the buildings tease us with glimpses of old Paris in its reflections. In the end, the film isn't about how modern architecture and urban design makes public space meaningless, but how we can, to quote film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, "...look around at the world we live in (the one we keep building), then at each other, and to see...how many brilliant possibilities we still have in a shopping-mall world that perpetually suggests otherwise..." It can be a lesson in how our desire for beauty and community can bring life into a manufactured and sterile environment.

The movie will follow with a lively discussion on the impact of urban planning.

Time: 5:30pm
Location: AIA East Bay Chapter Office, 1405 Clay Street, Oakland
Contact: Kellie Hewlett at 510/464-3600
Cost: $15 for chapter members and their guests; $25 for non-members; City Planning Department employees may register at the chapter member rate.
Register at http://www.aiaeb.org.
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