Pep Martín & Xavi Campreciós: Mies on Scene
… with the subtitle ”Barcelona in Two Acts” was premiered yesterday at the CCCB theatre in Barcelona within the DocsBarcelona festival. Full house for a film about the architectural gem of the city, the Pavilion set up by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich in 1929 at the world exhibition to be removed 8 months later and reconstructed in 1986. A work that – quote from the synopsis – changed the History of architecture forever… its image was always alive in the minds of generations of architects around the world…
It’s not easy to make a film about architecture but I enjoyed and appreciated the cinematic solutions the two directors have chosen. They have thought about composition and framing, and there is a fine balance between the images and the information and interpretative comments from the many people from the world of architecture in Barcelona and in New York, where the archive of van der Rohe is at MOMA.
And the directors do not refrain from anecdotes and letting the speakers be passionate like the wonderful German architect Fritz Neumeyer, who on location expresses his love to the building. Also great to have Oriol Bohigas in picture, the man who was a driving force behind the reconstruction of the Pavilion, that stands there waiting to be visited by anyone, who is fond of beauty!
In the press material the directors write about the building that they have been filming for the last nine years for different purposes:
The Pavilion is a scenario of endless perspectives, lights and reflections, a living building that changes at every hour of the day and at any season of the year. Each time you record it, the Pavilion surprises you with a new reflection or a new visual composition, and you discover that fourth dimension that Mies created with the game of materials and perspectives. A universe where the composition of each frame easily becomes art within art because the Pavilion generates and multiplies beauty.
Catalunya, 2018, 58 mins.
