Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner – Freida Lee Mock – U.S.A. 2006, 98 mins. In English. Bias alert: I loved the TV miniseries Angels in America. So I jumped at the chance to see this. Freida’s craft is immediately apparent – this documentary is seamlessly put together – not surprisingly since she’s won an Oscar in the past for another documentary (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, screened at the 14th FIFA). Kushner’s biography is formatted in three acts, similar to Angels, examining Kushner’s work and life in three areas: global responsibility in the post 9-11 world of terrorism, the AIDS epidemic and gay rights, and his principles and activism in social justice. All this from a nice Jewish boychik from Lake Charles, Louisiana (who knew?). And he’s funny, too. Which reminds me, I need to go buy my own decent copy of Angels!
Les Gymnases Olympiques de Yoyogi – Richard Copans – France 2005, 26 mins. In French. Japanese architect Kenzo Tange designed two gymnasiums for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics next to the Yoyogi Park area, near Harajuku and Shibuya districts. Forty-one years later, this dry, but informative film gives an ascetic view of the architect’s aims, philosophy, and the resultant structures. The larger of the two stadia is actually a suspension roof, in the same manner of a suspension bridge. An innovative design with some cultural references to older Japanese structures, the buildings remain in use today.
Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture – Teri When-Damisch – Canada/France 2006, 52 mins. In English and French with French subtitles. With Phillis Lambert having turned 80, this film serves as a toast to a life full of accomplishments, deserving lots of accolade. A real love-fest modeled on Citizen Kane, made with mockumentary style fake newspaper headlines mixed with historical ones, this authorized biopic traces Phillis Lambert’s (born Bronfman) life from her luxurious childhood in Westmount to her growing interest in Architecture, which led her education as an architect. Perhaps her most famous moment was when she convinced her father to ditch his grandiosely grotesque vision for the Seagram building in New York and hire Mies Van Der Rohe and Phillip Johnston instead. She is of course also famous for organizing committees to help preserve Montreal buildings of historical value that were threatened by real estate development in the 1970’s, leading to the eventual founding of Heritage Montreal in 1979. And her largest project, the Montreal Centre for Canadian Architecture, a museum and research center, firmly cemented her reputation of an architectural historian, researcher, and patron. The film spends a lot of time letting Ms. Lambert speak in her own words, something rarely offered to the public, who normally would be party only to newspaper articles or nth-generation gossip. In the end, she appears from this film to still be a vibrant, intensely driven individual, extremely private, and passionate about her love of architecture. She attended this second screening of the film at the CCA (it was the opening film of the festival and no doubt she was there as well) and received a standing ovation.
Milton Rogovin — The Rich Have Their Own Photographers – Ezra Bookstein – U .S.A. 2006, 59 mins. In English. Rogovin, son of poor Jewish immigrants from Russia in the early 1900’s, became, like his brother, an optometrist. Settling in Buffalo, New York, he swept up in the working man’s populist movement in the 1930’s. While he was doing little more than helping register Black voters and promoting union rights, he was subpoenaed by the Un-American Activities Commission in 1957 and accused of being the “Top Red” in Buffalo. Blacklisted for his refusal to implicate any others, and with his practice taking a big drop in business, he took up photography at fifty years of age, with a Rolleiflex twins lens reflex camera, taking pictures of the poor and disenfranchised in the Buffalo slums. His stalwart wife Anne (who died in 2003) accompanied him on many trips, which were later enlarged in scope to voyages to different parts of the world. This very unassuming man wrote to many a famous person, asking to collaborate. Pablo Neruda agreed, and accompanied Rogovin to poor villages in the south of Chile. Over the next forty years, his body of work has become so socially important that the Library of Congress agreed to be the repository of his work, something done with few photographers. For Rogovin, it was a moment of triumph, since it was the same government that had censured and blacklisted him forty years previously. http://www.miltonrogovin.com for more information.
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