Following its March world premiere online at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), the documentary short Open Sky: Portrait of a Pavilion in Venice, directed by Katerine Giguère, is available for viewing free at NFB.ca to mark World Architecture Day.
The film invites you to the famous Venice Biennale to discover the Canadian Pavilion, designed by Milan?s renowned Studio BBPR, and restored, together with its surrounding gardens, by the National Gallery of Canada on the occasion of the building?s 60th anniversary in 2018.
The filmmaker Katerine Giguère was both director and cinematographer of the project, creating an inviting portrait of the building, one of 29 pavilions in the Venice Biennale Gardens.
She skillfully intermingles more than 120 archival images, a dozen interviews with experts in various fields, and recent documentary footage revealing the innovative design of the building, its grace and elegance, and its profound relationship with the natural surroundings. The film is an hommage to a special architectural achievement, bathed in light and open to the sky. The experts interviewed for the film in Canada and Italy offer accounts of their personal connections with the pavilion and its gardens. Among them are Réjean Legault, professor at the École de design at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM); Karen Colby-Stothart, chief executive officer of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation (2013?2019); Josée Drouin-Brisebois, senior curator ...