We went to a lone screening of a film about the Israeli architect, Ada Karmi Melamede, made by her daughter, Yael, similar in some ways to My Architect: A Son’s Journey, the film about Louis Kahn made by his son, Nathaniel, and the more recent Stardust, made by Jim Venturi about his parents.

But My Mother the Architect is different because Ada is so reticent, so unwilling to say much about her life and emotions, why, for example, she failed to get tenure at Columbia after eighteen years of teaching there.  She then won the competition with her brother to design the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, which looks like a remarkable project – a combination of monumentality and reticence.  

The film tells one a lot about the position of women in the profession as was, not least in New York, and what it is probably still like today.  And about some of the tragedies of the current state of Israel.

It is so rare to see a film about under-expressed emotion and the nature of the film – thoughtful, very carefully composed – matches its subject.

You may only be able to see it in the Barbican this week.  Or Crouch End.