Ada: My Mother the Architect

Post-screening discussion with director Yael Melamede

After living for nearly two decades in the U.S. and raising a family there, Ada Karmi-Melamede moved back to Israel in the early 1980s, where she became one of the world’s most accomplished and prolific architects. From Jerusalem’s Supreme Court building to the Open University of Israel to Ben Gurion Airport, and beyond, Karmi-Melamede’s work has defined many corners of her home country. In this heartfelt and elegantly made documentary, her daughter Yael Melamede, a filmmaker and former architect herself, widens the scope on this pioneering figure, inquiring into the sometimes difficult choices instrumental in forming her family life and professional career. Sculpting with a cinematically architectural aesthetic all her own, Melamede had constructed a film that’s as much about how the public spaces around all of us are imbued with the personal as it is an intimate family portrait that only she could have told.