Director: Markus Kneer, Daniel Schwartz
23’, Venezuela, Switzerland, 2013
Spanish, English with Turkish & English subtitles
Torre David is the world's tallest squat. This skyscraper in the center of Caracas, Venezuela, was never completed and stood vacant for over a decade. Five years ago, 750 families from the slums moved into the tower, installed water and electricity, and turned this building intended as bank headquarters into their home. “For me, being here is an opportunity that came from a tragedy,” says one occupant who lost his house in a flood. With its open stairwells and gaping holes, this half-completed carcass of a building houses innumerable little paradises rising up from the concrete floors poured by the new residents themselves. There’s a shop, a basketball court, a parking garage, a guard and a lock on the door to keep out criminals. Forty percent of Caracas’s population lives in slums. “In the slum, life is lawless. Here, it’s safe,” explains one woman, and another explains how filthy the building was when they first entered five years ago. Photos illustrate the story in split screen. The squatters work communally to make the building habitable. Short interviews alternate with scenes from everyday life in the tower, accompanied by rap music from El Cancerbero and others.
1638, the year Louis XIV was born –his second name, Dieudonné, alluding to his God-given status– saw the diffusion of a cult of maternity encouraged by the very devout Anne of Austria, in thanks for the miracle by which she had given birth to an heir to the French throne. Simon François de Tours (1606-1671) painted the Queen in the guise of the Virgin Mary, and the young Louis XIV as the infant Jesus, in the allegorical portrait now in the Bishop’s Palace at Sens.
Pera Museum presents an exhibition of French artist Félix Ziem, one of the most original landscape painters of the 19th century. The exhibition Wanderer on the Sea of Light presents Ziem as an artist who left his mark on 19th century painting and who is mostly known for his paintings of Istanbul and Venice, where the city and the sea are intertwined.
Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 - 19:00
Friday 10:00 - 22:00
Sunday 12:00 - 18:00
The museum is closed on Mondays.
On Wednesdays, the students can
visit the museum free of admission.
Full ticket: 300 TL
Discounted: 150 TL
Groups: 200 TL (minimum 10 people)