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MFA Series is Built around the Great Minds of ArchitectureArchitect Moshe Safdie radiates a magnetism and star power that seems born for the camera.
If he hadn't been an architect, he could have been a memorable character actor.
He gets the chance to perform the part of himself in a remarkable documentary, "Moshe Safdie, the Power of Architecture," which kicks off a nine-part series called "Architects on Film" at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
It's a rich film, kept alive for all of its 90 minutes by Safdie's personal charm and gift of gab, as well as what the director, Donald Winkler of Montreal, calls "his instinctive sense of when he was on camera."
He's always articulate, always eloquent.
The film is part bio, part architectural tour guide.
It begins with shots of Haifa, the Israeli port city where Safdie spent his childhood, shots that seem to prove a direct influence of that city's hills and steps on the architect's later work.
We then follow Safdie at age 15 to Montreal, where as a young Israeli "Socialist Zionist" he felt out of place but triumphed in school.
An aptitude test helped direct him to architecture.
Then comes what is still the most astonishing of Safdie's works, the Habitat housing, done for the Montreal World's Fair of 1967 while the architect was still in his 20s.
It's a building that looks like a mountain made of Lego
more: www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles... (178)
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14/1/2006 | Viewed 24,224 time(s)
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