Broadway Express

Greg Lynn, one of the leading figures in computer-aided architectural design, visits the first in a series of exhibitions initiated by the Canadian Centre for Architecture for which he is the curator. The exhibitions, which will travel to the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, are meant to explore the role of digital technologies in the design process since its beginnings. The first exhibition, entitled "Archaeology of the Digital", features four individuals who are pioneers in applying new technologies to architectural design: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Chuck Hoberman, and Shoei Yoh. At the exhibition Lynn is joined by three of the four practitioners: Eisenman, Gehry and Hoberman, who each explain their path to the digital at the time.

When the Tuscan city of Pisa commissioned David Chipperfield to create a master plan that would bring new vitality to this historic spot on the Arno, an exhibition of selected works produced by him in the last 25 years was also invited. "David Chipperfield: Form Matters" documents the architect as he leads the way through his models, drawings and photographs, explaining his designs in the process. Chipperfield's vast array of international work spans over Europe, China, Japan, the United States and Mexico and as he guides us through his career Chipperfield offers a detailed accounts of his creative direction at every stop.

"Marking Infinity", Lee Ufan's recent retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim charts the artist's creation of a visual, conceptual, and theoretical language that has radically expanded the possibilities for sculpture and painting over the past forty years. Deeply versed in modern philosophy, Lee is also an influential writer and is recognized as the key theorist of Mono-ha, an anti-formalist, materials-based art movement that developed in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Active internationally over the last four decades, Lee is acclaimed for an innovative body of Post-Minimalist work that promotes process and the experiential engagement of viewer and site.

With the participation of famed architects such as Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman: Making Architecture Move provides an intimate look into the work of the daring and controversial creator. Filmed in the U.S. and Germany, Eisenman takes the viewer through several of his buildings, including the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, while explaining his upcoming projects such as the Rebstockpark community in Frankfurt and the Max Reinhardt monument in Berlin. His predecessors and contemporaries offer praise and commentary on Eisenman's complex body of work including their own thoughts and theories surrounding his unique style.

Made in 1980, this film explores the contemporary dance scene through the work of seven New York-based choreographers. They discuss the nature of dance and the evolution of their own work. Filmed at rehearsals, performances, and during interviews, the film is a unique primary source. The artistic roots of these seven artists can be found in Martha Graham's concern with modern life as a subject for dance and in Merce Cunningham's emphasis on the nature of movement. In the 1960s, the interaction of art forms generated choreographic innovations. Especially influential was John Cage, whose radical ideas served as a point of departure for much of the new choreography. Each of the choreographers in Making Dances draws inspiration from the Graham/Cunningham tradition, yet each makes a highly distinctive statement. Structure, movement in non-fictive time and space, and the nature of movement itself are recurring themes.

In 1943 Herbert and Lotte Strauss made the courageous decision to escape from Germany and almost certain extermination in a Nazi concentration camp. This is a personal account of their dramatic flight, building a new life in the United States, and coming to terms with the Holocaust. "We Were German Jews" grapples with the torment of living with the legacy of the Holocaust. The film chronicles Herbert and Lotte Strauss' return visit to Germany. They were not trying to assuage any sense of guilt over having survived; they wanted to confront the past by going back to where they had lived before the onslaught that claimed most of their relatives. This understated, very personal story adds significantly to the body of evidence that explores human behavior in the face of genocide and insists that we remember the past and learn from it.

Hans Werner Henze: Summer of 1966 follows the acclaimed German composer to Salzburg and Berlin, documenting his rehearsals for his now famous opera, "The Bassarids". Based on a fragment of a Euripides play, the opera was a widely celebrated point in Henze's career, capturing his compositional style and progressive musical attitudes. Celebrating his 40th birthday at the time, Henze was then living in Rome and enjoying a growing reputation all over Western Europe as a conductor and composer.

The first chapter in our Masters of Modern Sculpture series looks at groundbreaking work from the brilliant minds that reshaped sculptural art and inspired generations to come. Narrated by George Segal, The Pioneers explores famed pieces from sculptors such as Rodin, Maillol and Picasso.

Narrated by the architect himself, Frank Gehry: The Formative Years explores his long standing career and unique eye. The film looks at a number of Gehry's projects from private homes to complex public institutions, all of which echo his experimental style and vision. Works such as The Norton House, The Aerospace Museum and Loyola Law School demonstrate Gehry's eccentric and distinctive touch. The Formative Years is a survey of his beginnings when Gehry experimented with his own house in Santa Monica, giving him notoriety in the architecture scene.

The multiple means of making art after the end of illusionism led these artists to create performances, sculptures, earthworks, tableaux, furniture, shaped canvases, and more, using unusual materials. They explore the process of making forms and giving meanings to those forms. In this idea art, their focus is as often social and psychological as artistic. Some of their activities enlist engineering and construction techniques, others compose texts or scripts that are central to their art. Some cast the viewer in the role of a spectator, while the others demand active participation. The sources for their concepts and art works are equally diverse; the delicate proportions and balance of Early Renaissance painting, the exploration of the surface of the moon, the structure and inventions of vernacular architects, to name only a few.