Site&Sound is an event series that explores the relationship between architecture and film. Each session will feature curated clips and short films around a chosen theme, inviting discussion around particular elements of representation and the different techniques employed by filmmakers. Themes will examine a multitude of perspectives on architecture, ranging from varying building types to their individual component parts and how these are interpreted by the viewer as they see the world through the lens of the built environment.

Lifts and corridors often go unnoticed in day-to-day life, designed to get us from one place to another, but in cinema they become transitional spaces that resist dwelling and force events to happen.

The architecture of transit imposes constraints that cinema exploits. A lift seals people together, removes escape routes or makes time visible through changing floors. It creates enforced intimacy, sharing space with strangers or companions. This compression can generate romance, as in 500 Days of Summer, or explosive violence, such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Inception plays with this literally, with bodies floating in arrested motion, while Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory turns ascent into a flight of fancy.

Corridors operate through a different spatial logic. They're linear but can feel infinite, structured but disorienting. The hallway becomes a test for how long you can sustain movement, tension or a single shot. In Oldboy, one corridor becomes a single fight in an unbroken take. Kubrick's passages in 2001: A Space Odyssey seem infinite, as they curve back on themselves. And when Titanic floods its corridors, familiar paths become traps and navigation is all about survival.

This Site&Sound examines how cinema transforms functional architecture into narrative space. In these compressed environments, movement becomes charged with meaning. The structures themselves shape what stories can unfold within them.