Kyle Bergman, Architecture & Design Film Festival Founder, Aims to Tell Real Human Stories
As an undergraduate, Kyle Bergman considered becoming a filmmaker before settling on his chosen field of architecture. Those parallel interests would lead him to found the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), which has grown from a small gathering in Vermont into the country’s largest film festival dedicated to the subject. ADFF bridges the gap between those two industries by selecting films that have beautiful cinematography, inspiring design, and most importantly, real human stories. Interior Design spoke to Bergman ahead of the 2018 edition in New York, which begins on Tuesday, October 16, and marks a decade since its inception. Other stops for this season include Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Athens, with more to be announced. The program includes films that feature Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry, and Dieter Rams, among others, along with a range of panel discussions. A full schedule can be found on their website.
Interior Design: How has your education in film complemented your work as an architect now?
Kyle Bergman: The act of making a film and the act of making architecture are similar on a lot of fronts. They’re both collaborative, they’re both a balance of art and science, and most importantly, they’re both storytelling. Architects tend to forget that what we’re doing is storytelling. As architects, we discuss light, scale, and proportion being important, and those things are also critical in filmmaking. When done well, both architecture and filmmaking are a labor of love. People do it not necessarily for the financial reward, but because they’re really passionate about it. There are a ton of similarities.
ID: What led you to the idea for the film festival?
KB: I noticed that architects are very interested in filmmaking, and filmmakers are very interested in architecture. But the bigger and more interesting component for me was, as architects, we talk to ourselves all the time. What we don’t do so well is expand that conversation. Many people don’t quite understand what we do and how we think. The festival was a great opportunity to program things that interest both the professional designer and the general public, and to bring those two worlds together. At the festival there’s a bar and café—people stay for multiple films, hang out, and have conversations. We’re creating a place where the design conversation can extend to a broader audience. That was the driving force.
ID: Is it challenging to program films that appeal both to a general audience and industry insiders?
KB: When we’re programming, our goal is to source films exactly like that. It’s not challenging, but there are some films that better suit a professional community only. The sweet spot is balancing the two. It can’t be a story about just architects; it has to have a design element, but also a human story. When I first started to think about this festival, the lightbulb went off when I saw My Architect. I loved it because it was about Louis Kahn and architecture, but it was nominated for an Academy Award because of its human story—a son’s search for his father. It bridged both worlds perfectly.
ID: Last year you showed your first feature-length fiction film, Columbus. Are fiction films something you’d like to showcase more, or was that an outlier?
KB: It was kind of an outlier. It was a fiction film, but Kogonada, the director, was thinking about architecture in a way that ventured well beyond background imagery. He was thinking about what architecture means and how we think about it. There are many great films that feature architecture, but aren’t driving at the ideas architects and designers think about. They’re great eye candy, but we’re looking for something a little deeper. Columbus had that beautiful element, but he was also talking about positive and negative space in architecture. I’m curious about bringing in more commercial films like that.