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Three architects resume their first project—Cuba’s National Art Schools—left unfinished in 1965 when their creative visions came head to head with the political realities of the Revolution.
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create the world's most beautiful art school on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school's first classes soon followed. But as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed counter-revolutionary. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream. Their story begs the question—how dangerous can architecture be?
2007 / HD / Color / 16:9 (1.78:1) / 90 min / Stereo
Jerome Foundation
New York State Council on the Arts
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts
LEF Foundation
Cohen Family Foundation
Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown
Individual Donors
Fiscal Sponsorship: Women Make Movies
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Co-Director + Producer
Alysa Nahmias is founder and principal of Ajna Film. Unfinished
Spaces: Cuba's Architecture of Revolution is her directing debut about
the history and architecture of the most outstanding architectural
achievement of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba's "forgotten" National Art
Schools (1961-65). In the course of producing this film she has
received numerous grants and awards from government agencies and
private foundations, including the New York State Council on the Arts,
the Jerome Foundation, and the Graham Foundation. Nahmias holds a
Masters degree in architecture (M.Arch) from Princeton University and
a B.A. summa cum laude from New York University's Gallatin School of
Individualized Study where she studied art history, literature, and
Spanish. Nahmias is a member of the International Documentary
Association, the Independent Feature Project (IFP), and Women Make
Movies.
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Co-Director
Ben Murray previously directed the short documentaries Birds and Teenage Hardcore Punkrock Millenium. Murray is currently senior online
editor and effects artist at Postworks, New York. His regular clients
include major networks and numerous independent production companies.
His recent work includes: No Direction Home, directed by Martin
Scorsese; Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki; Fog of War,
directed by Errol Morris; My Architect, directed by Nathaniel Kahn; Born Into Brothels, directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman; and Once In a Lifetime, directed by Paul Crowder. Murray holds a BFA in
Film and Television Production from New York University's Tisch School
of the Arts. |
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