Daisy Ziyan Zhang + Ella Raidel
She crossed, USA 2024, 20:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Daisy Ziyan Zhang
A Pile of Ghosts, A/SG 2021, 70:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Ella Raidel
Wrinkles, MEX 2023, 10:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Daisy Ziyan Zhang
Daisy Ziyan Zhang + Ella Raidel
Film Screening: On Care, Space, and Transformation
Part of the MIT Fall 2025 Architecture Lecture Series.
Presented with the Architecture and Urbanism Group
How do we live with the buildings, neighborhoods, and cities that surround us—and how do they, in turn, shape us? This evening brings together acclaimed filmmakers Daisy Ziyan Zhang (MIT M.Arch ’23) and Ella Raidel (Assistant Professor, NTU Singapore) in a program curated by Marlene Rutzendorfer (wonderland architecture). Through three films, we will explore the intimacy of care and the fragility of structures—both physical and social—in a world of constant transformation. From the aging of a mundane residential building in Mexico, to the eclipsed stories of migrant women navigating foreign landscapes, to the ghostly remains of speculative urbanisation in China, these works invite us to rethink how cities are built, maintained, challenged, remembered, and imagined. The film screening will be followed by a conversation with the audience, hosted by J. Yolande Daniels, Associate Professor, Director, Architecture and Urbanism, MIT.
The MIT screening event is supported by NTU Global Research Excellence Award for Travel (GREAT). A collaboration with wonderland architecture.
Wrinkles, MEX 2023, 10:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Daisy Ziyan Zhang
Rooted in an anonymous residential building in Mexico with a history of over 70 years, this film borrows “wrinkles” as a conceptual thread to investigate the aging of architecture. Dancing between observation and imagination, between matters and actions, it traces the collective authorship of caretaking with 3D scans, and composes an alternative literacy that breaks the binary of before/after in architecture design. This film is part of an ongoing research built upon Daisy’s M.Arch Thesis at MIT.
She crossed, USA 2024, 20:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Daisy Ziyan Zhang
Situated in between the poetry and politics of the everyday, this documentary film grows from the body as a site - one that’s physical, sensual, adaptive; one that’s in action, in relationship, and in resistance. Through intertwined stories of two itinerant women crossing various boundaries on a foreign land - a cleaner and a student - it examines how our built environment is shaped by overlooked forces and unspoken stories, and so are ourselves.
“A portrait always tells us something about the portrayed and the one portraying. The film in question doesn’t merely portray care work, but creates a cinematic form through rhythm and observation to convey precarity, tenderness and evanescence; the gentle passion as well as aesthetic grandeur of human encounters. Through an homage to a very particular woman, it celebrates intimacy, trust and activities carried out by millions of women around the world without recognition. The protagonist’s love for plants is mirrored in the attention with which the filmmaker turns to the most ephemeral phenomena, be it a raindrop or the passing expression of a face.”
-- Award Statement for ZONTA Prize by International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2025
A Pile of Ghosts, A/SG 2021, 70:00 min, OV with English subtitles, Dir: Ella Raidel
Set in contemporary China, A Pile of Ghosts blurs documentary and fiction, following construction workers, real estate agents, and investors as they navigate real environments, casting calls, and shifting roles.
Reality becomes increasingly porous—fractured by contradictions and absurdities within China’s speculative urban development. A construction site bears a crude sign forbidding workers from defecating behind the building; elsewhere, the crumbling Swallow Hotel in Chongqing clings to existence as the last structure left in a condemned town. Its flamboyant owner, Charles, resists demolition by imagining himself in scenes from a Hollywood romance, shared with a mysterious visitor.
Award of Excellence (2022) in the East Asian Cinema section of the prestigious Image Forum Festival Tokyo—a special recognition for a European filmmaker deeply engaged with the cultural and cinematic contexts of East and Southeast Asia. The jury recognized A Pile of Ghosts for:
[…] its poignant exploration of the fragile realities embedded in China’s complex urban landscapes—juxtaposing new architecture and ruins, real estate brokers and performers. The film’s hybrid form, blending documentary and fiction, creates a compelling rhythm through meticulous editing and an evocative sound design. Its ambitious narrative structure and innovative storytelling approach were particularly commended for advancing the language of performative documentary.
-- Jury statement, The 36th Image Forum Festival Tokyo
Website Film:
https://www.apileofghosts.com/
Website Research:
https://www.hauntedspaces.net/
Daisy Ziyan Zhang is an observer. She crafts films and artifacts that inquire about hidden forces that shape the built environment, and share unspoken narratives for discussion. Working with personal histories, situated knowledge, and embodied data, her body of work attempts to create alternative imaginaries of the everyday, rippling with longing, searching for kinship. She was trained and practiced as an architect, and holds a Master of Architecture from MIT. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Venice Architecture Biennale, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, Venice Architecture Film Festival, Image Forum Festival, etc., and acquired by MIT Museum as a permanent collection.
Ella Raidel is a filmmaker, visual artist, and interdisciplinary researcher. Her work engages with urban space and the politics of images, investigating how visual culture reflects and shapes the ways we live together. She is an Assistant Professor at NTU Nanyang Technological University Singapore’s School of Art, Design, and Media. Her artistic practice spans documentary and experimental film, immersive storytelling, VR/AR technologies, and 360-degree filmmaking, offering new ways of seeing and sensing. By integrating art, technology, and social research, she creates a discursive space for critical engagement within the expanding field of audiovisual media. For her filmic body of work, Ella Raidel was honoured with the Outstanding Artist Award 2022 for Documentary and Fiction Film by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture. Her work has been published in the book: Of Haunted Spaces – The Films of Ella Raidel Cinema, Heterotopias, and China’s Hyperurbanization, Edited by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore 2023, NUS Press
Marlene Rutzendorfer
Marlene Rutzendorfer is an architect and producer of architecture and urbanism related films. She is curator of, among other festivals, Architektur.Film.Sommer at Az W/MuseumsQuartier Vienna. Her research focuses on counter narratives, civic space, and care in relation to art, architecture, and film. She has been developing formats of architectural mediation and interactive urban research, participatory design, and exhibition architectures with wonderland architecture platform for various institutions, including DAZ Berlin, Architekturzentrum Wien, Harvard GSD, the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 (Blickpunkte Festival, Regional_Express), Archtober @ Austrian Cultural Forum New York, IBA_Wien Neues Soziales Wohnen, and Belvedere 21. Marlene was a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Department of History of Art and Architecture and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna & Webster Vienna. wonderland.cx, regional-express.org
This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and will not be streamed.
Lectures are free and open to the public. Lectures will be held Thursdays at 6 PM ET in 7-429 (Long Lounge) and streamed online unless otherwise noted.