Film Festival 09 - Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
USA 2008, 84m
Director: Eric Bricker
This documentary is a treasure trove of modernist architectural
eye-candy, like a Taschen coffee table book come to life. 'Visual
acoustics' is a coinage of photographer Julius Shulman, and the
film is a celebration of his decades of work shooting architecture.
Shulman was so intimately connected and concerned with promoting
the homes created by the great American modernists (Wright, Gehry,
Neutra et al.) that the film doubles as a celebration of that
entire era, one which he was arguably pivotal in defining. Most
architecture films tend to focus on the contemporary creation of
large public buildings. Visual Acoustics takes the opposite
approach and is all the better for it: it takes us into domestic
spaces and talks with the people who have lived in them for
decades. Shulman, a spry nonagenarian, has maintained long-term
relationships with the architects and the owners of the homes he
documented and he gives us a privileged entrée to the kind
of iconic houses most of us can only dream about.
www.juliusshulmanfilm.com
