The Design Exchange is proud to announce the Canadian premiere of Unfinished Spaces with introduction by Co-director Benjamin Murray
January 19, 2012 at the DX
6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
ABOUT
“Cuba will count as having the most beautiful academy of arts in the world.” —Fidel Castro (1961)
Cuba’s ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists in the wake of Castro’s Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately rediscovered as a visionary architectural masterpiece.
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school’s first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.
Unfinished Spaces features intimate footage of Fidel Castro, showing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it also documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists.
FILMMAKER BIOS
Alysa Nahmias, Co-Director, Co-Producer
Alysa Nahmias is founder and executive director of Ajna Films. Unfinished Spaces is her feature directing debut. Her producing credits also include The Listening Archive and Outside the Giardini. She has received numerous grants and awards from government agencies and private foundations, including the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Graham Foundation. Nahmias holds a Masters degree in architecture (M.Arch) from Princeton University and a B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
Benjamin Murray, Co-Director, Co-Producer, Director of Photography
Benjamin Murray started his post production company, The Room, in 2010 and currently partners with Technicolor through two Flame Premium suites. His regular clients include major networks and numerous independent production companies. Murray’s recent projects include: No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese; Capitalism: A Love Story, directed by Michael Moore; The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, directed by Thom Zimny; Client 9, directed by Alex Gibney; Reagan, directed by Eugene Jarecki; Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris; My Architect, directed by Nathaniel Kahn; Born Into Brothels, directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman; and Once In a Lifetime, directed by Paul Crowder. Murray holds a BFA in Film and Television Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Cambridge Galleries Design at Riverside presents:
5%: AGAINST THE ODDS
CANADIAN WOMEN IN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
On view until: January 15, 2012
5% presents Canadian designers, Helen Kerr (Toronto); Diane Bisson
(Montreal); Dianne Croteau (Toronto); Rachel Dacks (Savannah); Patty Johnson
(Toronto); Cynthia Hathaway (the Hague); Michelle Ivankovic (Amsterdam).
Curated by: Esther E. Shipman.
Photo: Peter Ross
Cambridge Libraries and Galleries
1 North Square, Cambridge, ON, N1S 2K6
Business of Design Week (BODW) 2011 which will be held from 28 November – 3 December 2011 at Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Business of Design Week is one of the Asian leading’s annual design events organised by HKDC. This year the partner country is Germany and a series of world-class designer masters will attend the event to share their views on design, innovation, and branding, etc. More information here: www.bodw.com
Over the past few months we’ve been working with a web programmer to create the WordPress based member pages we have been discussing for some time. Some of you may have noticed since the last ACIDO.info refresh that the member’s section had disappeared, this was in preparation to go live with the new one. The members area is now re-launched so all members in good standing can create and manage their own profiles as long as you are a member. YOU WILL NOT APPEAR ON THE MEMBERS LIST UNLESS YOU CREATE A PROFILE so everyone needs to make the time to show themselves off to the Industrial Design community and potential clients and/or employers.
This members area is phase one of an ongoing web update that will streamline all processes related to membership, payment, and collaboration.
Please click the following link and follow the steps. Once you receive your password you can fill in the rest of your profile. Your bio pic or avatar will be automatically re-sized as required but a landscape or square format is recommended to avoid any undesirable cropping. Images load a lot faster if saved as web format (72dpi) and remember, you will be able to edit and change your profile any time and there is no need to contact ACIDO to make any changes.
http://acido.info/wordpress/members/member-registration/ or click “register” under the membership menu. All current members will be activated within 48 hours. New applications will be contacted by membership.
Celebrate with OCAD University on Saturday, October 29 as they mark our birthday with a day of celebration! Click HERE for more details of their open house.
Check out this cool article on one of the more interesting and most misunderstood characters on your keyboard:
http://sixrevisions.com/infographs/visual-ampersand-infographic/
Please join us on Tuesday October 25th at Grano for the next presentation in our series Design Innovation in Ontario. This month we welcome Maurice Barnwell, professor and author of the newly released book Design, Creativity and Culture – An Orientation to Design. Copies of the book will be available for $25. Maurice will generously donate $5 from the sale of each book to ACIDO so plan on obtaining your copy on the 25th.
Advance registration required, space is limited.
Please RSVP with Richard Brault
416 280 4473 or innova@bellnet.ca
Thanks to a small dedicated team led by Davide Tonizzo, Michael Manolis Vranas, Payam Shalchian and Jonathan Loudon, ACIDO was well represented at IIDEX.
The theme was an open forest that took visitors through a design journey. The booth highlighted the various stages in a project, starting with research/sketching and ending in a finished product. At the booth’s terminus, guests were invited to share their thoughts, insights, stories, complaints, praises and other comments on industrial design.
We’d like to thank Arconas, Neinkamper and Nova for donating furniture and prototype samples for the booth.
Below a few images of the booth.
