Call for entries for Lisbon's international Architecture Film Festival ARQUITETURAS, on the theme of REHAB NATION - rehabilitation of old city centres, gentrification of tourist neighbourhoods, social housing and construction of new communities? Rethink and debate our spaces and cities!

Deadline for entries: 1 May 2016

ARQUITETURAS Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal: 12-16 October 2016

In a broader sense, the word rehabilitation usually has a positive feeling attached to it. Especially when applied to the context of architecture or the built environment: it always implies a process of regeneration, the termination of a previous condition of abandonment or destruction and the beginning of a new and improved stage in the life of a certain building or construction.

However, when we see this word applied to a moment in a person’s life, we usually associate to it an always difficult condition: it corresponds to an arduous process of recovery from addictions, compulsions or destructive behaviors. In this sense, rehabilitation suggests both a treatment as penitence.

When we amplify this concept of “rehabilitation” to a whole city, territory or nation, what are the implications that might come attached to it? As eventual citizens of a hypothetical “rehab nation”, might we be condemned to live in a permanent state of recovery? Always adapting to some sort of crisis, adversity or struggle, but never really expecting to definitely overcoming it?

For the program of its next edition, ARQUITETURAS is seeking for films that explore the wide range of connotations that might be associated with the expression “REHAB NATION”. From the rehabilitation of old city centers to the gentrification of touristic neighborhoods; from the dereliction of social housing to the construction of new senses of community; from the privatization of the public space to the emergence of news forms of urban intervention. The possibilities are endless and “REHAB NATION” functions as an extensive pretext to basically think and debate the way we currently live in our spaces and our cities.