City of Desire

Tel Aviv, Israel’s lively and exuberant city on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, has the distinction of possessing the world’s largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings. Bauhaus architecture, the forerunner of the modern International style, emerged in Germany in the 1920s and fell out of favor after the Nazis seized power in 1933. Driven out of Germany because of increasing antisemitism, some Jewish architect’s partial to the Bauhaus school immigrated to then Palestine and envisaged a new city in Tel Aviv, where most of them settled. Their design of more than four thousand buildings in the distinctive Bauhaus style facilitated Tel Aviv’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a sophisticated and cosmopolitan metropolis unafraid of the avant-garde. City of Desire paints an expressive picture of an alluring architectural brand that is inextricably associated with Tel Aviv, the glowing White City, showcasing how and why it has earned its special status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Accompanying the film premiere is a discussion with director Marcel Prins and moderator Charles Treister. To view the conversation please click here.