Architecture on Film: Reyner Banham Double Bill + ScreenTalk

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (UK, 1972, Julian Cooper, 52 mins)

Roads to El Dorado: A Journey with Reyner Banham (UK, 1979, Julian Cooper, 52 mins)

One of the rare architectural critics to achieve celebrity status, the writings and thinking of Reyner Banham (1922-1988) came to define and create architectural culture. As at home with modernism as pop culture, Banham's hugely inventive and engaging prose, perspectives and analyses of architecture, the city, culture and its artefacts continue to mark generations. A radical thinker with roles in the Independent Group and Pop Art, a dedication to collapsing high and low culture, and a fascination for technology, it was only natural that Banham would find a fitting home for his ideas on the domestic small screen.

In celebration of 100 year's since Banham's birth, and 50 since the landmark Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, we present an evening of films and discussion dedicated to his work.

The evening will be introduced by Richard J. Williams (author, Reyner Banham Revisited (Reaktion, 2021), Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures, University of Edinburgh) who will chair a conversation following the screening with guests Adrian Forty (Emeritus Professor of the History of Architecture, The Bartlett School of Architecture), writer and journalist Owen Hatherley, and LA-based critic, editor and curator Mimi Zeiger.

With thanks to the BFI National TV Archive