BEYOND UTOPIA - CHANGING ATTITUDES IN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

Director Michael Blackwood / 1984 / USA/German Federal Republic/UK

This television documentary examines the work and theories of Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, American architect int he vanguard of Post-Modernism.

Philip Johnson, the acknowledged Dean of American architects, appears throughout the film, commenting on the work of these architects, whose ideas have inspired changes in his own work. Since the early '70s, a handful of architects have offered alternatives to the glass and steel idiom.

If there is one thing that unites the innovative architects of our time, and the architects examined in this film, it is their realisation that architecture is unlikely to transform the world into the glittering Utopia envisioned by the early Modernists. The work of these architects does not offer either consensus or the certain promise of success, but one thing is sure: the "search for something more'" has at last begun. Michael Blackwood is a prolific producer-director of film documentaries for television. See "Empire City" also screening at (this year's Festival.).

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