Philip Johnson

Sydney Pollack's first feature-length documentary focuses on acclaimed architect Frank O. Gehry. Beginning with the architect's own original sketches for each major project, the film explores Gehry's process of turning these abstract drawings first into three-dimensional models, often made simply of cardboard and tape, then into finished buildings of titanium and glass, concrete and steel, wood and stone. While the intimate dialogue between the two old friends courses like a continuous melodic line through the film, Pollack captures the grandeur of Gehry's architecture-from his earliest building, a hay barn, to what are now recognized as some of the great buildings of the modern era, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

This documentation of the great master of modern architecture, produced at the time of his centennial, reviews his major work and offers rare footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Mies' achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Arthur Drexler, Robert Venturi and Philip Johnson, as well as architectural historians and Mies' own son, Dirk Lohan.