‘Gray Matters’ to open NY Architecture & Design Film Festival

On October 15, the 2014 Architecture & Design Film Festival will open its sixth season in New York with the World Premiere of Marco Orsini’s documentary, Gray Matters. Gray Matters presents the life and career of visionary 20th century architect and designer Eileen Gray in a novel way; Orsini and his team follow Gray’s own travels from Ireland to London, Paris, and beyond, all the while chronicling her inspiration, her challenges, and her influence, as well as the tragedies and controversies that punctuated her exceptional life. Moreover, it ties in to the larger discussion about women in architecture and their indispensable contribution to the field.

It is a historical, scholarly, and cinematic investigation of the life and career of one of the most influential, but least known, modernist icons who built the first concrete modernist villa and made the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction. Gray Matters will be screened at Tribeca Cinemas for the Opening Night presentation of the Architecture & Design Film Festival and will be replayed on the festival’s closing day, October 19th

According to Architecture & Design Film Festival Founder and Director, Kyle Bergman, “Until very recently, Eileen Gray was one of the greatest unsung design heroes of the 20th films on contemporary icons such as Zaha Hadid, Michele de Lucchi, and Michael Graves, this is a special opportunity to share Gray’s important contributions and pioneering spirit with a new generation of design and architecture enthusiasts.”

The film examines Gray’s lifelong immersion in art, design and architecture—her fierce dedication to the work and unswerving faith in her aesthetic vision—while chronicling her inspiration, her challenges, and her influence, as well as the tragedies and controversies that punctuated her exceptional life. It considers the contemporary relevance of her Modern and Minimalist architectural and design aesthetic, with Gray’s newly restored masterpiece, the Villa E1027, playing a leading role in this compelling account of inspiration, rivalry, jealousy, neglect, and rehabilitation. By the end of the film, the hypothesis is proven: Gray matters, profoundly and in so many ways.

Featuring never-before-seen footage and candid interviews with the world’s foremost scholars, curators, auctioneers and collectors—including four living peers and collaborators of the artist—Gray Matters appears at the perfect moment. Much that it depicts will never again be available to any filmmaker.

The documentary is a companion piece to the forthcoming feature film, The Price of Desire, directed by Mary McGuckian, and is part of the Eileen Gray Project, which is tapping into various mediums to shed light on a pioneer of modernism that was almost erased from architectural history.