Chairs

Ödipussi

March 1988 •German

Paul Winkelmann is the CEO of a successful business in Hamburg that he took over after the death of his father eight years ago. But he is still strongly dominated by his 78 year old mother who cares for him as a child, and who cannot understand why he took an apartment on his own after all these years. The real "problem" starts when Paul gets to know psychologist Margarethe Tietze whose relationship to her parents is also not so easy after all.

Twelve Plus One

October 1969 •English

Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.

Bauhaus 100

August 2019 •English

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

The Puffy Chair

June 2006 •English

Josh's life is pretty much in the toilet. He's a failed NYC indie rocker, and a failing booking agent. But he finds the potential of a small victory in a really bad idea. He decides to purchase a 1985 Lazy Boy on eBay, just like the one his dad had when Josh was a kid. He'll drive cross-country for the chair, staying with Emily at his brother's house on the way, and deliver it to his father as a surprise birthday gift. But when Rhett ends up coming along for the ride, it's three people and a giant purple puffy chair in a too-small van... and one of them has to go before the trip's end.

The Twelve Chairs

December 1962 •Spanish

When her country is taken over by socialist revolutionaries, a wealthy woman can't bear to give up all of her wealth and possessions to the new government, so she hides all of her treasures in the 12 chairs of a dining-room set. After her death her nephew finds out what she had done and, since the chairs had been "nationalized" and are now in the possession of a dozen different people, he sets out to track them down and get the treasures he believes rightfully belong to him.

Chair Times

April 2019 •German

"Chair Times" charts a course through an ocean of chairs. In the focus are 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum. Arranged according to their year of production, they illustrate development from 1807 to the very latest designs straight off the 3D printer, forming a timeline to modern seating design. The film features many people whose vocations involve design and who are experts in the field, such as designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director Emeritus of MAK Vienna/Los Angeles Peter Noever, Mateo Kries, Director of the Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum curators Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit. And your guide through the history of chairs is Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra.

Italomodern – Design

January 2025 •German

Thy Father's Chair

March 2016 •English

Twins Abraham and Shraga are prisoners of all the dreck piled high around their Brooklyn apartment - until concerned neighbors intercede.

Concrete Forms of Resistance

June 2020 •English

Filmed in Tripoli, Lebanon, Concrete Forms of Resistance is a documentary centred upon the city’s abandoned ‘Permanent International Fair’, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the mid-1960s. Progress and crisis, labour and capital, material and memory, are reflected through a very intelligent rhyme between image and sound. The touching voice and words of Niemeyer as a call for life, and the beautiful camerawork as a weaving of ghosts in the present landscapes.

The Chair

June 2020 •English

A sentient chair becomes jealous of a living boy

Chairobics

January 1991 •English

A fun rehabilitation program for persons with moderate to severe lung disease, brought to you by health professionals in Exercise Physiology and Respiratory Medicine.

Take a seat

April 2025 •English

Yin Honqiang, a master carpenter from Jiangyin, has been working with wood for over 50 years. Along with his son and his grandson, they create handcrafted pieces of furniture of the highest level, what lead them to be one of the most important furniture makers in all of China. Take a seat is a close look at their way of working while keeping the tradition alive throughout generations.

Lamps

December 2024 •English

Watch your eyes...

Cretinetti s'incarica del trasloco

September 1911 •Italian

Moving Cretinetti style: a tornado of furniture.

Möbelhaus Sexy

Invalid date •German

A frustrated couple blasphemes about their neighbor. Where do such people shop? A commercial promptly takes the two of them on a journey through the the “Sexy Furniture Store”, where furniture is not only practical but also provocative. Order now to unleash their long-hidden sexual energies!

Entr'acte

January 2007 •English

A side table and a chest of drawers (played by actors in ingenious soft-sculpture costumes) indulge in a bit of passive-aggressive furniture moving. Do you know what your household decor is up to when you’re not looking? Another characteristically eccentric bit of humor from Dutch filmmaker Sietske​ Tjallingii, aka "Miss T."

Vývoj a mechanisace ohýbáren

January 1952 •Czech

Routes: Exploring the British Origins of Newfoundland Outport Furniture Design

January 1995 •English

A 1995 David Quinton film exploring the British origins of Newfoundland outport furniture design.

Piccolo

November 1959 •

Two men in adjoining duplexes, good friends, are enchanted by the song of a bird. One buys a small harmonica and learns to play it; he keeps his neighbor awake. The neighbor buys a larger harmonica, and an arms race ensues; the instruments get larger, until it's a piano vs. a pipe organ, and then they start bringing in larger groups of friends until an entire orchestra is playing the 1812 Overture. The houses collapse from all this, atop the dueling orchestras, and on their way up to heaven, the man puts his small harmonica up for sale.

La silla

August 2006 •Spanish

A man is consumed with the idea of acquiring a chair from a bric-a-brac shop.