It’s again, double-bill time! Two seminal documentaries invite us back to the 1980s, Jennie Livingston’s PARIS IS BURNING is an eye-opening watershed to survey Harlem’s drag ball subculture, and by extension, queer existence, meanwhile Hiroshi Teshigahara’s ANTONIO GAUDÍ lingers mesmerically in Barcelona mostly, to arrange a grand tour of the starchitect’s jaw-dropping achievements.
Japanese avant-garde filmmaker Teshigahara’s treatment of Catalan modernist architect Antoni Gaudí (1852—1926) is a crackerjack of a different approach, if PARIS IS BURNING attempts to give the voice of a particularly voiceless bracket existing on the fringe, Teshigahara opts for total abandonment (sans voice-over) of exposition in his pilgrimage to Gaudí’s creation, so much so that we practically know nothing about Gaudí the artist himself, save for the vast and astonishing works which he munificently bequeaths us.
Only through the alternately eerie and euphonious score, Teshigahara seems to inject some hints of personal commentaries to the rapt viewers, whereas his camera dutifully observes, peers, scopes from varied distances and angles to establish a comprehensive visual overview of Gaudí’s grotesque, sui generis, multifaceted art pieces, juttedly ensconcing themselves among our temporal existence and simultaneously distinguishing themselves from any possible angle of our collective gaze, and the most crucial impression is that Gaudí’s buildings are never off-limits, they are built for the mass to gawp at, to spend time with, to dwell in, only occasionally, Teshigahara draws on imagery to suggest the possible inspirations which lead Gaudí’s creative juice flow (the neo-Gothic influence for instance).
The pièce-de-résistence is, without doubt, Barcelona’s landmark, The Basílica de la Sagrada Família, which has been eternally under construction since 1882 and still remains unfinished, and for sizzle, it speaks volumes of Gaudí’s deathless, unforgettable contributions to both our mundanity and spirituality, and invites viewers to delve further into the architect’s world, for that purpose, Teshigahara’s documentary roundly hits the mark.
p.s. Both films run a bit over 1 hour (78 minutes vs. 72 minutes), and feel too short for their immensely intriguing subject matters, coincidentally, the former reflects an urgency for fleeting figures to leave a mark in the world while the latter, a testimony that what essentially leaves the mark is a creator’s silent, inanimate creations, but to Gaudí, to any departed phantom,nothing in our world truly matters.
