Joseph Hillel’s documentary City Dreamers have the hallmarks of what audiences in Hot Docs cinema would see. Jazz music, archive photos, and the works. There are even some scenes where the camera moves within the photos to suggest movement. Nonetheless, those elements still try and somewhat succeed in boosting the stories of four female architects. Despite roadblocks, they helped shape postwar and contemporary urban spaces. The documentary, conventionally enough, accompanies those photos with archive audio and narration. It lets people hear Blanche Lemko van Ginkel and her husband Sandy in a post-Bauhaus meeting. Scenes like this show that those collectives also allowed women as members and are not as stereotpically exclusive. The other architects are Phyllis Lambert, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown, who, in their ways, shaped history.

It’s nice to learn these women and their works. It shows footage of some of the buildings under the Unite d’habitation in Marseille. As it turns out, that project isn’t just Le Corbusier’s work. Van Ginkel designed the roof and surfaces of some of those buildings. The documentary reminds us that people designed details that others take for granted. It actually shows people walking around, oblivious to those details. That those other people can see if they pay attention feel the same joy in looking. Van Ginkel definitely felt joy in designing it. Her voice and explanation is a reminder that architecture is an art. Museums are fine but architecture democratizes art.

Hillel shows these architects talking about the act of seeing not as a constant but as a realization. Such a realization came from Lambert who helped van der Rohe design the Seagram building. Lambert then began working in Montreal. She recounts ignoring Old Montreal before realizing how great it is. She eventually became one of the women responsible from restoring that neighborhood instead of demolishing it to build a highway. During these scenes, Hillel sometimes cuts away from Lambert to focus on her bookshelf. He’s like a visitor enjoying his host’s house, reminding us that visits were a thing.

Again, this is boomer nostalgia. There’s also something strange about pointing out these women’s present and past selves. But it still follows a tradition of that sub genre’s better examples. It follows its subjects passing their knowledge to a future generation instead of berating them. At the risk of sounding stereotypical, maybe it’s showing the feminine instinct to teach instead of watching men grandstand. These women have seen and shaped history and have no plans of retiring. Their words and their work ethic are inspiring. There’s hoping that this documentary lights a fire in my generation to innovate, especially during these times.

City Dreamers is available on demand. Cinema Moderne is also holding a Facebook Q&A with Hillel and special guests this Sunday, April 19 at 5 p.m.