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DVD Maya Lin - A Strong Clear Vision
It was for good reason this film won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Documentary, as it displays, in abundance, the emotional human responses Maya Lin elicits with her architectural designs and sculpture. There was much controversy surrounding her Vietnam War Memorial, not the least of which focused on her Chinese-American origins. Writer/director Freida Lee Mock uses conventional methods (interviews, archival footage) to follow Lin's career in chronological order. It examines her work since winning the contest in which her student model was chosen for the infamous Washington war memorial. The stark emotion evoked by Lin's sensuous and kinetic creations promises to bring tears to your eyes. Unfortunately, we learn more about her work than about the artist, whose personality is oddly absent from this film. Mock only somewhat reveals the intense focus and powerful vision that drives Lin. --Rochelle O'Gorman
This film moved me. Maya Lin is incredibly gifted, articulate, and seems amazingly humble. The Vietnam Memorial, and the hardships of it's creation, show the young woman's strength. It's truely a feat worth the history books. The most striking thing I got out of this film though was the fact that it wasn't a fluke. The rest of her work is just as incredible, even if not as well known. I'm so glad that I saw this film. The DVD is well done, audio is good and the extras, while sparse, are enough. Everyone really should see this film about one of the great artists living in our time.
Evocative!!
Maya Lin is a great designer, and this respectful film shows us her well mannered approach to art and architecture. I'll especially note her tactile abilities in her work process, and her perfection and concerns for the built environment in this film. This DVD of Miss Lin is a down to earth inspiration to a self starting person like myself.
poetry of the design process
This documentary film is a unique experience for which it is difficult to find a comparison. On a basic level, the film discusses several projects of artist/architect Maya Lin, a young Chinese-American woman who unexpectedly won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while a Yale student. Her design, a departure from conventional expectations, is now famous, and is the most visited memorial in Washington D.C. Some of the strong feelings that the Vietnam War elicits in people, especially its veterans, is touched upon in moving live scenes at the Memorial and in the controversial hearings that were held in the wake of the design's selection. The experience put Maya Lin in a national spotlight and forced the student to mature very quickly addressing the grievances of veterans and others. In the end, with some minor site additions, the Memorial stood as designed, with the names of all the veterans of Vietnam etched in its simple polished, reflective granite. Other works of Maya Lin, including the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; the Yale Women's Table; and others demonstrate a similar simplicity and poetry that is both moving and powerful. There are moments in the film, as simple as when the artist is working at her drafting table, that suggest something both beautiful and spiritual, providing a deep insight into the creative process of this noted public artist.
Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides is a truly beautiful, Scottish-German 2001 documentary about artist Goldsworthy, a Scotsman whose medium is nature itself and whose preferred studio is the outdoors, particularly where water forever flows, rises, and/or retreats. The soft-spoken, secluded Goldsworthy is seen hard at work making ephemeral sculptures out of bits of ice in the trees, or building tall, mysterious cones from loose rock, which stand like spiritual sentinels in forests and on shorelines, overgrown by plants or swallowed daily by high tides. Filmmaker-cinematographer Thomas Reidelsheimer goes to great and sometimes inexplicable lengths to make visual corollaries to Goldsworthy's ideas about underappreciated relationships between light, color, movement, balance, and... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Thomas Riedelsheimer DVD Release Date: Released the 28 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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One nonfiction film that truly creates a narrative journey, My Architect is filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's engrossing search for his father. Louis Kahn, one of the most celebrated architects of the 20th century, died in 1974 and left behind a highly compartmentalized life, including two children born out of wedlock to two mistresses. Nathaniel interviews the members of this somewhat puzzled family, but his deepest experiences are visits to the buildings that his father made (such as the grand Salk Institute in La Jolla, California), culminating in an emotional trip to Bangladesh. Here, Louis Kahn designed a massive government complex, a soaring achievement (and fascinating paradox--a Muslim capital designed by a Jewish man). This film asks: where does an artist truly live? In his... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Nathaniel Kahn DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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About architecture and a man whos got what it takes to sweep those commissions his way! I M may be from the old architecture school, but its good to watch him talk about how he interacts with his clients. I didnt know much about his work apart from the Louvre, and its rather nice to see his other projects. Pristine, clean with a slight technical twist, I M's work is quite a legacy. If youre not from the design and architecture backgrounds, the DVD might be a bit boring and long drawn for you. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Peter Rosen DVD Release Date: Released the 29 July 2003 Special Order
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After you've seen 5 Films About Christo & Jeanne-Claude, your appreciation for art and artists will be permanently enlightened. Spanning three decades of unique collaboration between controversial public-art creator Christo, his creative partner and wife Jeanne-Claude, and cinema verité pioneers David and Albert Maysles (Salesman, Grey Gardens, and many other award-winning films), this DVD set of five captivating, unscripted documentaries is a living chronicle of art as a public challenge, inviting the viewer to witness the creation and installation of temporary artworks that triumphantly illustrate (as noted by Salon.com essayist Charles Taylor) "the collision between art and everyday life." Whether they are raising a massive "Valley Curtain" of vibrant... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Christo - Jeanne-Claude Director(s): Albert Maysles - David Maysles - Charlotte Zwerin - Susan Froemke - Deborah Dickson DVD Release Date: Released the 27 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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