Antonio Gaudí by Japanese auteur Hiroshi Teshigahara returns to the Film Society in tandem with the opening of Stefan Haupt's Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation on Friday, December 19.
The 1984 documentary Antonio Gaudí spotlights the work of famed Catalan architect, from his distinctive houses in Barcelona to his still unfinished, and spectacular, Sagrada Família. Woman in the Dunes (1964) filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara explores Gaudí's elaborate designs and incorporation of natural forms yielded some of Europe’s most eye-popping and idiosyncratic buildings, culminated his career with the mammoth Sagrada Família cathedral, which caps the film with its startling majesty. Mostly eschewing voiceover narration and historical context, Teshigahara lets the structures speak for themselves, his camera lovingly lingering on the lines, curves, and surfaces of Gaudí’s incomparably imaginative designs.
The Village Voice noted of the film: “Something of a passion project, completed decades after an earlier visit by the director, the film is given over to an eager, rolling catalog of Gaudí's fin de siècle works sans much voiceover or any explanatory text.”
Stefan Haupt returns to the cathedral in his feature Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation. The doc brings together architects, art historians, and other authorities to recount the story of the Sagrada, which is inextricably bound to Gaudí’s own biography, comprising politics, cultural identity, and unorthodox architectural ideas.
A testament to an artist’s imperishable vision, and how the beauty of creation lies as much in the process as the product. More than 130 years after construction began, the Sagrada Família (“Holy Family”) basilica in Barcelona is only halfway complete. The brainchild of Gaudí, who took over the project in 1883 and worked on it until his death (and now resides in its crypt), the church’s construction has spanned world wars, Franco’s regime, and dire economic downturns.
The Globe and Mail said of the film: “The main contrast in approach can be seen between two of the church’s façade sculptors: Japanese-born Etsuro Sotoo, a former Zen Buddhist who converted to Roman Catholicism out of his devotion to Gaudí, is committed to understanding Gaudi and his vision of nature. In contrast, Catalan sculptor, Josep Maria Subirachs, whose angular modernist sculptures contrast with Gaudí’s curvilinear forms, chooses to honour the architect’s achievement with his own originality.”
