Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Forgotten Movies: MY ARCHITECT



A decade or so ago, Nathaniel Kahn, the illegitimate son of architect, Louis Kahn, set out on a journey to discover his father. Aside from a wife and daughter,, Kahn had two other families, each with one child. Despite promises to Nathaniel's mother, Kahn never left his wife. Nathaniel harbored few hard feelings toward his father and this documentary is mostly a tribute to him as well as the story of his attempts to discover why Kahn did what he did. 

The most interesting parts of the film though look at the man within his profession. For a name that is known he had few big successes although the ones he did have (the Salk Institute and a building in Bangladesh) are considered masterpieces.Architect I.M Pei summed it up when he said better to design just a few masterworks than dozens of competent buildings.

While here, we have been looking at a lot of documentaries about artists and architects. I also recommend the one on the Woodman family. Amazing.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This sounds like an interesting film that I need to add to my "must see" list; my own family experiences ("documented" in my Beyond Eastrod creative nonfiction offering a few days ago -- and if I had known how to do it, I could have made it into a screenplay) would seem to make me the perfect audience for such a tortured tale of fractured families. Thank you, Patti, for the posting.

Charles Gramlich said...

Nope, never heard of this one, I fear. Sounds interesting though

George said...

I find your description of MY ARCHITECT intriguing. I'll have to find a copy of it and watch it.

Deb said...

I remember reading about this documentary when it was first released--hard to believe it's been over 10 years. I'm always curious about situations like this: were all the families aware of the existence of the others? Could anyone maintain a secret family in today's world? Just one Google search could bring the whole thing tumbling down.