City of Dreams

Overview

This fascinating documentary explores the collaboration between Marion Mahony, the first registered woman architect in the world and the longest serving designer in Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice, and husband Walter Burley Griffin. Their struggle with unyielding bureaucracy, the philosophies that underscored their life and work, and their passionate commitment to an architecture that expressed a balance between society and the environment and an affinity between the human spirit and the natural world. The film weaves together their personal and professional lives, drawing on archival and contemporary footage of their work, an extensive collection of photographs, the couple’s own correspondance and writing, and interviews with prominent architects, social historians and the people who knew them.

Production

A Film Australia National Interest Program, Australian Broadcasting Corporation