Unfinished Spaces

Year: 2011
Country: USA, CUBA
Run Time: 86 minutes

One day after the Cuban Revolution, architect Selma Diaz was walking along a Havana street. A car pulled up with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara inside. They had just been trying the bourgeois sport of golf when Castro decided to convert the country club into the best art school in the world. And thus Selma got a job, and the National Schools of Art were born. Diaz hired architects Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi, all attracted by the idea of an upheaval of design and convention. Between 1961 and 1965, they built a stupendous multidisciplinary complex of sensuous, flowing forms. Draftsmen and students participated in the construction, and there was always a drum circle or dancing going on. People started giving classes in the UNFINISHED SPACES. But soon the political climate changed. The architects' vision was considered elitist, Soviet-style prefabricated buildings became the norm, and the jungle overtook the uncompleted dream experiment. A fascinating film about architecture as a metaphor for integration and freedom. (In English and Spanish with subtitles) –B.B.

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