Vacancy": descriptive geometry of emptiness. When you go to a city, are you still the same? What does the city give you of its own? What do you want to keep? Imagine a city built from scratch. We imported dwellers, animals, we created order and then we tried progress. The city is born out of emptiness and emptiness is what we fear. When we use the word "chaos" to define what’s too much and excessive we often fear the chaos of nothingness. That’s why we try to fill it up. The city was created so that man could get lost in it, so that he could stop hearing himself. There are no returned reflexes in the midst of chaos. "Vacancy", by Mathias Müller, is about the city of Brasília, built in 1960. The director and the federal capital of Brazil are the same age. They were both built. Brasília – the ultimate utopia – the possibility we all harbor inside of us: each man/woman is a host to a utopia. A film that 20 years later still retains an aura of mysterious storytelling, by way of manipulating (archival) images and color, by way of using the geometric layouts of a city built with a ruler and pen. In 1998, the year Müller made this film, Lisbon was having its Expo. A city built within a city. We have the ability to create places but can we really give them an identity? (Inês Meneses)