Unfinished Spaces

With director Benjamin Murray Q&A

Trailer Link: http://www.unfinishedspaces.com/trailer.html

USA, 2011
Directors: Alysa Nahmias, Benjamin Murray
Cinematographer: Benjamin Murray
Editors: Alex Minnick, Kristen Nutile
Composer: Giancarlo Vulcano
Cast: Vittorio Garatti, Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro
Running Time: 86 minutes

Critically acclaimed at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival, Unfinished Spaces follows three architects as they return to Cuba, after 40 years in exile, to finish what was considered the world’s most spectacular and futuristic art school, which the country’s revolution had inspired and then abandoned.

Filmmakers Alysa Nahmias and Ben Murray invested 10 years to create their ambitious and engaging look at the troubled existence of Cuba’s National Art Schools. The story begins in 1961, when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara commissioned three young, visionary architects to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the schools’ 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 faded during the Cold War, the government abruptly halted construction 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 expertly captures the passion and emotional struggle of each of these men in the face of their shattered and now revived dreams. Their original designs reveal an intrinsic ingenuity and beauty, both modern and traditional in influence.

Todd McCarthy for the Hollywood Reporter describes Unfinished Spaces as “an apt and unstressed metaphor for the history of the Cuban revolution itself … lucidly filmed and absorbing.”

Note: Q&A discussion between filmmakers and audience adds approximately 30 minutes to running time.