A new restoration of the Academy Award-nominated My Architect, which received rapturous reviews when it first opened at Film Forum nearly 20 years ago, is returning for a week in April. Film Forum is also hosting three Q&As with the film’s director Nathaniel Kahn and other invited guests. In this first Q&A he is joined by author and architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

Louis Kahn, who in 1974 died bankrupt and alone in New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, is considered by many architectural historians to be the most important architect of the second half of the 20th century. He left behind a brilliant legacy of intensely powerful and spiritual buildings—geometric compositions of brick, concrete, and light, that in the words of the L.A. Times, “change your life.” Kahn’s dramatic death laid bare a complex personal life of secrets and broken promises: he led not a double, but a triple life. In addition to his wife and daughter, there were two non-marital children by two women with whom he maintained long-term relationships.

In My Architect, one of these children, Kahn’s only son, Nathaniel, sets out on an epic journey to reconcile his father’s life and work. I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Philip Johnson speak movingly of Kahn’s work (the Salk Institute, the Exeter Library, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Capital Complex of Bangladesh) and the women and children in his life shed light on this secretive, peripatetic man—a dynamo who gave selflessly to his art—but whose relationships were left on the drawing board, only to find completion in this wonderful film.

Nathaniel Kahn is an American filmmaker. His documentary My Architect (2003) — about his father, the architect Louis Kahn — was nominated for an Academy Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, and won the Directors Guild of America Award. His film Two Hands (2006) about the pianist Leon Fleisher was nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy. Kahn’s documentary on the interaction between the worlds of art and commerce, The Price of Everything (2018) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was broadcast by HBO and was nominated for an Emmy. His film The Hunt for Planet B (2021) about NASA’s Webb Telescope premiered at SXSW, was broadcast by CNN and was nominated for an Emmy.

With support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund. Organized by Film Forum.

Friday April 7, 7:30 – 10:00 pm
Film Forum
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Other dates:

Q&A with “My Architect” Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn
Sunday April 9, 7:10 – 10:00 pm
Film Forum
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Q&A with “My Architect” Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn with architects Brinda Somaya & Gina Pollara
Tuesday April 11, 7:30 – 10:00 pm
Film Forum
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