SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY

Year: 2005
USA: Sony Pictures Classics
UK: Artificial Eye
Cast: 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
Director: Sydney Pollack
Countries: USA / Germany
USA & UK: 83 mins
USA Rated: PG-13 for brief strong language
UK Certificate: 12A contains one use of strong language
USA Release Date: 19 May 2006 (Limited Release - Los Angeles)
USA Release Date: 12 May 2006 (Limited Release - New York)
UK Release Date: 29 June 2007 (Limited Release)
UK DVD Release Date: 22 October 2007

UK Distributor

Synopsis

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 rarefied 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.

DVD EXTRAS

Interview with Frank Gehry and Sydney Pollack
Q&A with Sydney Pollack, moderated by Alexander Payne5 video studies of Gehry's buildings by producer Ultan Guilfoyle: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao - DG Building, Berlin -Vila Olimpica, Barcelona - Der Neue Zollhof, Dusseldorf - Spiller Residence, Venice California - Experience Musicproject (EMP), Seattle - Vitra Design Museuem, Weil am Rhein - Gehry Residence, Santa Monica California
Theatrical trailer
Sydney Pollack and Frank Gehry biographies