Fri, Nov 27 / 7 pm
Directed by Marco Orsini
2014, USA, 72 min
Architecture+Film is an ongoing series of films which focus on architecture and design, co-presented by the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation – a charitable organization dedicated to advancing the awareness and appreciation of Winnipeg’s built environment through public education.
Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th Century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building – persistently and perversely credited to her mentor – her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.
Sponsored by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Winnipeg Architecture Foundation.
