Cinema surveillance images are loading at the bottom of the page
\nMy architect: A son\'s journey - Louis Isadore Kahn, Nathaniel Kahn
\nThreat advisory: Under evaluation
\nMovie propaganda
\nA man. His buildings. His secret lives.
\nMy architect: A son\'s journey is a tale of love and art, betrayal and forgiveness - in which the illegitimate son of a legendary artist undertakes a five year, world-wide exploration to understand his long-dead father.
\nLouis Isadore Kahn, who died in 1974, is considered by many architectural historians to have been the most important architect of the second half of the twentieth century. A Jewish immigrant who overcame poverty and the effects of a devastating childhood accident, Kahn created a handful of intensely powerful and spiritual buildings - geometric compositions of brick, concrete and light - which, in the words of one critic,\n"change your life." While Kahn\'s artistic legacy was an uncompromising search for truth and clarity, his personal life was filled with secrets and chaos: he died, bankrupt and unidentified, in the men\'s room in Penn Station, New York, leaving behind three families - one with his wife of many years and two with women with whom he\'d had long-term affairs. In My architect: A son\'s journey, the child of one of these extra-marital relationships, Kahn\'s only son Nathaniel, sets out on an epic journey to reconcile the life and work of this mysterious, contradictory man.
\nTheatrical propaganda posters
\n
Target demographic movie keyword propaganda
\n- \n
- Film biography Louis Isadore Kahn architect father son build Jew relationship \n
Persons of interest
\n- \n
- Edmund Bacon .... Himself \n
- Edwina Pattison Daniels .... Aunt Eddie \n
- BV Doshi .... Himself \n
- Frank O Gehry .... Himself \n
- Philip Johnson .... Himself \n
- Louis Kahn .... Himself \n
- Nathaniel Kahn .... Himself \n
- Sue Ann Kahn .... Herself \n
- Harriet Pattison .... Herself \n
- Priscilla Pattison .... Aunt Posie \n
- IM Pei .... Himself \n
- Moshe Safdie .... Himself \n
- Robert AM Stern .... Himself \n
- Alexandra Tyng .... Herself \n
- Anne Tyng .... Herself \n
- Shamsul Wares .... Himself \n
- Nathaniel Kahn .... Screenwriter \n
- Nathaniel Kahn .... Director \n
Cinematic intelligence sources
\n- \n
- My architect: A son\'s journey official movie site \n
- My architect: A son\'s journey film production notes \n
- My architect: A son\'s journey QuickTime movie trailers \n
- Awards and film festivals: \n
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS - Oscars) 2004: Nominated: Best Documentary, Features (Nathaniel Kahn, Susan Rose Behr) \n
- Chicago International Film Festival 2003: Won: Audience Choice Award Silver Plaque (Nathaniel Kahn), Gold Hugo Best Documentary (Nathaniel Kahn) \n
- Directors Guild of America, USA 2004: Won: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary (Nathaniel Kahn) \n
- Full Frame Film Festival 2003: Screening \n
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2003: Won: Audience Award Best Documentary (Nathaniel Kahn) \n
- Independent Spirit Awards 2004: Nominated: Best Documentary (Nathaniel Kahn), Truer Than Fiction Award (Nathaniel Kahn) \n
- Philadelphia Film Festival 2003: Audience award \n
- Louis Isadore Kahn biography \n
- See also Sketches of Frank Gehry \n
- Studios and distributors: \n
- Hopscotch Films \n
- \n
- \n
Intelligence analyst
\nSpecial Agent Matti
\nTheatrical report
\n*
\nSecurity censorship classification
\nPG (Low level coarse language)
\nSurveillance time
\n116 minutes (1:56 hours)
\nNot for public release in Australia before date
\nFilm: 14 October 2004
\nCinema surveillance images
\n\n
[ Return to top ]
\n\nLouis Isadore Kahn biography
\nLouis Isadore Kahn shares with Frank Lloyd Wright, LeCorbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, a central position in 20th century architecture. Born in 1901 on the Estonian island of Osel, Kahn immigrated with his family to Philadelphia at the age of four, where he lived in profound poverty. Talented in art and music, the young Kahn made money teaching drawing and playing piano in silent movie houses. He won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied under the great Paul Cret in the Beaux Arts tradition, graduating with a degree in architecture in 1924. He married Esther Israeli in 1930 and their daughter, Sue Ann, was born ten years later.
\nThroughout the 1930s and 40s Kahn struggled to define himself artistically and to obtain commissions - a task he found difficult, due both to the great depression and to his outsider position as a Jew working in a protestant gentleman\'s profession. In 1947, he accepted an appointment as professor of architecture at Yale University, beginning a career as a teacher - first at Yale, later at the University of Pennsylvania - which lasted the rest of his life and was to profoundly influence a generation of architects. It was during this time of professional frustration that Kahn began an extramarital relationship with the brilliant young designer Anne Tyng (who bore him a second daughter, Alexandra, in 1954) and that he experienced a fundamental creative breakthrough. On a trip through Greece, Rome and Egypt, Kahn realised that what was lacking in the steel and glass aesthetic of high modernism was the monumentality and mystery found in ancient ruins.
\nKahn was now over 50, and with little over 20 years left to live, he embarked on a feverish series of commissions starting with the Yale Art Gallery (1951-53) and the Trenton Bathhouse (1954-59) that were to forever change the course of architecture. Developing his approach in works like the Richards Medical Towers (1957-62), The First Unitarian Church (1959-69) and his first true masterpiece, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959-67), Kahn fused an ancient sense of humanism with modern building techniques. He preferred simple materials - brick and concrete - but he worked them with astonishing facility, creating spaces that are both highly functional and spiritually uplifting. For Kahn, architecture became the search for truth and buildings were living things. He was fond of saying, "I asked the brick, \'What do you like brick?\' And brick said, \'I like an arch.\'"
\nKahn was also obsessed with natural light; his use of it is unmatched by any other modern architect. In his late buildings, like the Exeter Library (1967-72), The Yale Centre for British Art (1969-74) and the transcendent Kimbell Art Museum (1967-72) - considered by many to be the greatest museum built in the last century - light is the controlling principle of design and the character of the spaces change dramatically depending on the time of day, the weather and the season. The last decade of Kahn\'s life was also marked by an increasing focus on landscape and the site, interests he shared with landscape architect Harriet Pattison, who worked in his office and with whom he had a son, Nathaniel, born in 1962.
\nEver the idealist, Kahn found it difficult to work within the strict guidelines imposed by clients, deadlines and budgets and he often saw cherished commissions awarded to lesser architects. Thwarted in his dreams to remake his native city of Philadelphia, Kahn poured his energies and his already strained resources into his two largest projects - The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India (1962-1974) and the monumental Capital Complex at Dhaka Bangladesh, begun in 1962 and completed after his death. It was here on the sub-continent that Kahn\'s dream of creating a city of the future was realised. Significantly, the Muslim leaders of Bangladesh consider Kahn (a Jewish- American) to be not only the architect of their government centre, but also an architect of their fledgling democracy. It was on his return from India that Louis Isadore Kahn suffered a fatal heart attack in the men\'s room in Pennsylvania Station, New York on the night of 17 March 1974. He was at the height of his creative powers; many of his projects, including a synagogue for Jerusalem and projects in Europe and the United States remained unfinished.
\n