Antonio Gaudi

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s documentary Antonio Gaudi (1985) on Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi isn’t your typical documentary. But that’s OK, because if there’s anything Gaudi wasn’t it was your typical architect. Gaudi (1852-1926) created architecture that managed to combine something of art nouveau with natural shapes and forms to create buildings that are still quite unlike anything else. The buildings shown—all of which are in Barcelona—are magnificently otherworldly. They’re architectural landscapes of the mind—the unique mind of Gaudi. They’re beautiful, fanciful and sometimes a little terrifying. But what they don’t really do is lend themselves to description—and that’s the approach the film takes. It simply presents the buildings to us without discussion or pontification. It is, I think, the best possible way.