A film directed by Sydney Pollack...

SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
DIRECTED BY SYDNEY POLLACK

 

http://www.sonyclassics.com/sketchesoffrankgehry/

 

 





 

“I prefer the sketch quality, the tentativeness, the messiness, the appearance of in-progress rather than the assumption of total resolution and finality..”

Sketch for the Diller Building, New York City
Director Sydney Pollack has made his first feature length documentary on the acclaimed architect, Frank O. Gehry.
The two men have been friends for many years, and Pollack completed the film over a period of five years, starting in 2000.

Frank Gehry loves to sketch; it is the beginning of his architectural process. And it is his love of the sketch that gave Pollack his first clues to the style of this documentary film. Beginning with Gehry’s own original sketches for each major project, the film explores Gehry’s process of
turning these abstract drawings, first into tangible, three-dimensional models, often made simply of cardboard and scotch tape, then into finished buildings of titanium and glass, concrete and steel, wood and stone.

To capture the sketch quality in the documentary, Pollack uses a combination of film and Mini DV (digital video) as his media. Spending countless hours in Gehry’s studio, on building sites, and in his home, this unobtrusive and quiet shooting style has captured, for the first time, the
essence of Gehry’s unique architectural process, and his shy and elusive personality.

As a counterpoint to the deliberate informality – the sketch quality – of Pollack’s work with the video camera, he painstakingly captures on film, the grandeur of Gehry’s architecture, from his earliest building, a hay barn
in California, to what are now recognized to be some of the great buildings of the modern era, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Walt
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

The dialogue between Pollack and Gehry, as intimate as that of any two friends of long standing, courses like a continuous melodic line through the film.

At the heart of the film is the low-key, informal quality that Pollack brings to his conversations with Gehry, and the many other participants in the film.

This is not a film about rarified architectural theory. On the contrary, Pollack’s ability to pierce the skin of architectural theory allows him to draw deep insights into the life of this extraordinary architect and his singular architectural process.

Sydney Pollack and Frank Gehry, Bilbao, Spain
Sydney Pollack

SYDNEY POLLACK
Sydney Pollack’s (Director, Executive Producer) films have received 46 Academy Award® nominations including three for Pollack for Best Director, and two for Best Picture. Out of Africa won seven Oscars®, including Best Picture and Best Director for Pollack. Sketches of Frank Gehry is Pollack’s first feature documentary.

His films include The Interpreter, Random Hearts, Sabrina, The Firm, Out of Africa, Tootsie, Absence of Malice, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of
the Condor The Way We Were, Jeremiah Johnson, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

Pollack won the New York Film Critics’ Award for his 1982 film Tootsie, and the David di Donatello Award for Three Days of the Condor. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Director twice, the National Society of Film Critics’ Award, the NATO Director of the Year Award and prizes from the Brussels, Belgrade, San Sebastian, Moscow, and Taormina Film Festivals.

He served as President of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and was honored by the French Government with the Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.

The American Film Institute voted Tootsie the #2 Comedy of all time and The Way We Were and Out of Africa were both included in the AFI’s top 100 Romantic Films of all time. In 2000 he was awarded the Directors Guild of
America John Huston Award by the Artists Rights Foundation.

As an actor, Pollack has appeared in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, Robert Altman’s The Player, Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, Steve Zaillian’s A Civil Action, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Roger
Michell’s Changing Lanes. On television he has appeared on Mad About You and Will & Grace.

In 1985, Pollack formed Mirage Productions. Under that banner he has produced the films Presumed Innocent, The Fabulous Baker Boys, White Palace, Major League, Dead Again, Searching for Bobby Fisher, Sense and
Sensibility, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. In 2000, Anthony Minghella became a partner in Mirage Productions.

Pollack is a founding member of The Sundance Institute, The Chairman Emeritus of The American Cinematheque, a sustaining founder of The Film Foundation of the Director’s Guild of America, and on the Board of
Directors for The Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation.

Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry is that rare kind of architect who has garnered both critical acclaim and popular fame. His designs dramatically blur the line between art and architecture, yet the strong appeal of his sculptural designs does
not obscure the role of function. Gehry’s is a painstaking process of subtle vision and revision, both in his famous sketches and in his models.

In 1989 Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the pre-eminent award in architecture. In 1989 Gehry was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, its highest honor. In 2001, Gehry was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Participants
Buildings Filmed
Philip Johnson
Sir Bob Geldof
Barry Diller
Michael Eisner
Dennis Hopper
Michael Ovitz
Milton Wexler
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Ed Ruscha
Chuck Arnoldi
Julian Schnabel
Peter Lewis
Mildred Friedman
Herbert Muschamp
Hal Foster
Charles Jencks
Norman Rosenthal
Thomas Krens
Rolf Fehlbaum
The Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
The Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
DG Bank, Berlin, Germany
Der Neue Zollhof, Dusseldorf, Germany
Fred & Ginger, Prague, Czech Republic
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein,
Germany
Experience Music Project, Seattle
The Fish, Barcelona, Spain
The Spiller Residence, Venice
Frederick R Weisman Art Museum,
Minneapolis
Loyola University Law School, Los Angeles
The Gehry Residence, Santa Monica
Davis House, Malibu
Winton Guest House, Wayzata, Minnesota
O’Neill Hay Barn, San Juan Capistrano
Sirmai-Peterson Residence, Thousand Oaks
 

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