Architecture and cinema as memory and resistance at ADFF:STIR Mumbai 2025

Architecture and cinema continually interact in a circular ( and often symbiotic) relationship. While the built environment frames the lived experiences of its inhabitants, the cinematic lens is poised to capture its architectural seams as extensions of its people and their stories, each informing and melting into the other. Dwelling on this intersection of architecture and films, and the offshoots it yields, Sameep Padora, founder of Sameep Padora and Associates and dean of CEPT University, Megha Ramaswamy, screenwriter and director and Kyle Bergman, founder and festival director at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), came together in an insightful ~multilog(ue) session at the National Centre for the Performing Arts’ (NCPA) Experimental Theatre in Mumbai, India. As part of the inaugural edition of ADFF:STIR Mumbai, the conversation—titled Architecture and Cinema: The Extraordinary Everyday and the Cinemato-Architectural Artefact—took place as part of ~log(ue), the festival’s extensive talks programme. Moderated by architect, writer and researcher Bhawna Jaimini, the discourse navigated how the speakers viewed and harnessed architecture in cinema, cinema in architecture and the human in both.

For architects and designers, it is important to have an audience and a society that understands architecture and design and allows them to do better work—it pushes them harder and allows them to push back. – Kyle Bergman

During the conversation, Bergman, who began conceptualising the architecture festival in the early 2000s, reflected upon the need for “a society that understands architecture and design and allows architects and designers to do better work”. The curation of the festival, for him, is a way of carrying architecture and design conversations out of exclusive forums and to the public through films. For Ramaswamy, architecture in her films and storytelling unfold through—and are authentic to—the eyes of the characters. “It is a mindful interpretation of a character’s space,” she noted. The panellists further explored how the characters’ perception of a city was bound to influence the viewers’ interpretations and expectations of that city. Padora recalled Katha (1982) as one film that aptly captured the ties between architecture, the city and human relationships for him.

Everything (in filmmaking) is dependent on the vision or the thoughtful spaces your characters interpret through what they see; that is a decision you make as a storyteller at the end of the day. – Megha Ramaswamy

The complete picture of a city, however, is part cinematic and part chaotic. How does one reconcile these contradictions in practice? Ramaswamy considers beauty and ugliness as incidental to the character’s experiences—the visual tone staying authentic to the story. “What I really like about the experience of Mumbai or any city is its ability to surprise you,” Padora added. He went on to emphasise the ‘strange adjacencies’ that mushroom across an urban fabric in response to its unique challenges—compression in Mumbai, for instance. These ‘non-types,’ as the Indian architect calls them, exist despite regulations and architectural homogenisation, and define a place.

We need to ask ourselves what kind of city we live in and experience. One act of resistance would be to start questioning that and looking at ways to erase some of these edges that we are making so strongly. – Sameep Padora

The final section of the session pondered where architecture or filmmaking was positioned in resistance—and if there was a need for this expectation at all. As cityscapes are slowly lost to globalisation, and industrialisation threatens environmental sanctity, Ramaswamy noted that buildings are testimonies to social, political and economic changes over time. “What you choose to see and what you choose to show is a very strong social and political decision you make,” she explained. Reflecting further on rapidly changing and ‘developing’ cities, Padora spoke about the tendency of new architecture to isolate and how people’s movement remained largely limited from one gated community to another. “One act of resistance would be to start questioning that and looking at ways to erase some of these edges that we are making so strongly. Is there another way for us to look at development?” he contemplated.

Bergman, speaking of the event’s curation and its hopes to contribute to change, concluded, “We need to look at ideas in cinema and architecture that allow for a better way to move forward. The festival is our way of resistance.”

With ADFF:STIR Mumbai geared to return to the National Centre for the Performing Arts in 2026, we look back to key conversations from the ~log(ue) programme and highlights from the 2025 edition. Stay tuned for more throwbacks and exciting updates to be released in the coming weeks.