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Conferences
Conferences
SAH Annual International Conferences bring members together for scholarly exchange and networking
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Publications
Publications
Through print and digital publications, SAH documents the history of the built environment and disseminates scholarshipLatest Issue:
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About
About
SAH promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of the built environment worldwide for the benefit of all
Award Information
The SAH Award for Film and Video was established in 2013 to recognize annually the most distinguished work of film or video on the history of the built environment.
The award is global in scope with no geographic or political boundaries limiting subject matter or production team. The topic of the film or video must be any aspect of the built environment including the history of buildings, interiors, monuments, landscapes,
cultural landscapes, urbanism, designers, engineers, clients, preservation, conservation, citizen engagement, or other topics related to the history of the built environment.
Films and videos representing a wide range of methodologies
will be considered including documentaries, critiques, theoretical works and documentary recreations of lost sites. Films and videos by independent directors and producers, including those with a K-12 educational focus, are also welcome.
Films or videos must have an initial release date within the past three years. Honorable Mentions may also be awarded.
Entries for consideration will be submitted, on a DVD or a link to an online viewing site such as Vimeo,
to the award committee members and the SAH office by the director, producer, or producer’s distributor.
Nominees will also submit a 150–250-word narrative that addresses the goals of the film/video, the intended audience,
where the work has been screened/aired/viewed, and what kind of response the work has received.
The most important criterion is the work’s contribution to the understanding of the built environment, defined either as deepening
that understanding or as bringing that understanding to new audiences. A second criterion is a high standard of research and analysis, whether the production was for a scholarly audience, a general audience, or both. A third criterion is excellence
in design and production.
The Award will consist of a certificate and citation that will be presented at the Awards Ceremony at the Society’s Annual International Conference. Following the presentation, the film will be shown at the conference. The Award will be announced in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the SAH Newsletter, and on the SAH website. The winning film or video will become part of the Society’s permanent archive, housed in the library at the Society’s headquarters, Charnley-Persky House, in Chicago. The recipient will be required to supply two copies of the award-winning film on DVD for the Society’s archive.
| July 1, 2024 | Nominations open |
| August 31, 2024 at 11:00 pm CDT | Nomination period closes |
| September–November 2024 | Committee deliberations |
| January 2025 | Award(s) announcement |
| April-May 2024 | Awards conferred at 78th Annual Conference |
| 2024 | Barry Farm: Community, Land, and Justice in Washington, D.C. (2023) Sabiyha Prince and Samuel George, Directors DC Legacy Project and Bertelsmann Foundation, Producers Honorable mention: Tropic Fever (2022)Robin Hartanto Honggare, Mahardika Yudha, Perdana Roswaldy, Directors | |
| 2023 | We Love We Self Up Here
Kannan Arunasalam, Director and Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas, Producers, 2021 | |
| 2022 | Not Just Roads | |
| 2021 | Uppland Based on research by Killian Doherty and directed by Edward Lawrenson, 2018 | |
| 2020 | The First Line of China City Dreamers, 2018 Director: Joseph Hillel Producer: Ziad Touma Learning from Buffalo, 2018Filmmaker: Rima Yamazaki | |
| 2019 | Vilanova Artigas – the Architect and the Light Directed by Laura Artigas and Peter Gorski Olé Produções, 2015 | |
| 2018 | Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future Director: Peter Rosen Peter Rosen Productions, 2016 | |
| 2017 | Talking to My Father Filmmaker: Sé Merry Doyle Loopline Film, 2015 | |
| Honorable Mention: Tower House sixpackfilm, 2013 Filmmaker: Karl-Heinz Klopf A Tropical House sixpackfilm, 2015 Filmmaker:Karl-Heinz Klopf | ||
| 2016 | The New Rijksmuseum Filmmaker: Oeke Hoogendijk First Run Features, 2014 | |
| Honorable Mention: Haus Tugendhat Pandora Film, 2013 Filmmakers: Dieter Reifarth (director) and Filipp Goldscheider (producer) | ||
| 2015 | The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux and the Buffalo Park System Library of American Landscape History in association with Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc, 2013 | |
| 2014 | Unfinished Spaces Filmmakers: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray Bullfrog Films, 2012 |
Image: Film still from Vilanova Artigas – the Architect and the Light
2025 Award Recipient
is this an architectural documentary? (2023)
Sumedha Kelegama, Irushi Tennekoon, and Sumudu Athukorala, Directors
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka, Producers
Sumedha Kelegama, Irushi Tennekoon, and Sumudu Athukorala, Directors
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka, Producers
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“is this an architectural documentary?” an innovative introduction to work of pioneering Sri Lankan architect Minnette De Silva, is the winner of the 2025 Society of Architectural Historians Film and Video Award. Both scholarly and broadly accessible, the film recasts and reorients the canonical narrative of modern architecture by intertwining three stories of architecture in the global south: the pioneering practice of de Silva, the experiences of residents in her 1958 community housing scheme, and the non-linear journey of the filmmakers, who question and challenge the existing format of architectural documentaries.
Presenting the dialogue in the form of an animated graphic novel, the filmmakers self-consciously and playfully challenge the traditional interview and oeuvre format of many documentaries about architectural luminaries. This format enlivens interviews and remembrances, giving color and warmth to architectural drawings, newspaper clippings, old photos, and the words of current residents, professional colleagues, and those who knew the architect. Moving from past to present and back again, this recursive, dialogical, non-linear film eventually echoes de Silva’s innovative participatory methods.
2025 Honorable Mention
Bruno Zevi: Architettura Come ProfeziaBruno Zevi: Architecture as a Prophecy
Luca Guido, Director
Bruno Zevi Foundation, Producer
“Bruno Zevi: Architecture as a Prophecy,” is a well-researched and beautifully structured documentary, for interpreting Zevi’s monumental oeuvre through the lens of his formative anti-fascist politics. The film’s rhythm of four chapters and clever sub-divisions resonates, cinematographically, with Zevi’s analytic rigor and animated pedagogy. While known for his personal charisma and radiophonic voice, the filmmakers intertwine the intellectual and political in Zevi’s life to show how his personal experience during W.W.II, and the vulnerability he felt under authoritarian rule, turned into a catalyst for his uncompromising challenge to contemporary architectural dogma. For Zevi, the social purpose of groundbreaking architecture was to “deconstruct homogenous institutions of power [and] censorship.” The didactic format of the film thus serves as a timely reminder of the critical and imaginative potential of modern architecture because, to quote Zevi, “architectural poetry” can emerge only through “an engaged, pained, [and] disturbed modernity.”