ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)
There seems to be an endless appetite for depictions of the lone genius architect, both as a mythological creature walking amongst us, and as a metaphor for just about everything. And yet one of the best movies about one may never get its due. Ada: My Mother The Architect, by Yael Melamede, about her mother, Ada Karmi-Melamede, one of Israel’s most celebrated architects, is an extraordinary film that addresses all the big questions while also portraying a human being who is very much mortal.
Melamede is a veteran filmmaker and one of the creative forces behind the Oscar-nominated My Architect (2003), by Nathaniel Kahn about his larger than life, emotionally elusive father, the architect Louis Kahn. In an echo of Kahn’s quest, Melamede set out to portray a parent whose monumental creations shroud a very complex personal life and relationship with her family.
Of course, the film is also about an individual whose creations helped express Israeli aspirations. It is tragic that this has cost the film the currency it deserves, not least because it interrogates all the big themes. It sheds light on the left-wing Zionist idealism that literally built the country (Karmi-Melamede was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1936, when Bauhaus-trained Jewish architects, fleeing the Nazis, arrived there – their stories, their buildings, and the tragedy of one people’s alienation leading to that of another are not depicted in the film but her life, work and idealism are very much an extension of it). Karmi-Melamede, and her brother Ram Karmi, won the competition to build the Israeli Supreme Court, beating out Richard Meier, I.M Pei, and Ricardo Legoretta, three of the world’s biggest starchitects. Continue reading on THE FEMALE GAZE.
ABOUT YAEL FRIEDMAN
Yael Friedman is a journalist based in New York. She covers art and culture and their intersection with economics, politics, and history. She has written extensively about urban history and urban planning, particularly New York’s, analyzing its past and assessing its present and future. Her articles have appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, 1843, The Conversationalist, The Economist, The Daily Beast, Haaretz, Forward, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Urban Omnibus.
