[via archinect] Two extensive interviews with Daniel Libeskind--one contemporary, one from 1997, when he was working on the Berlin Jewish Museum--form the core of Rob Schr–der's documentary for VPRO, the cool Dutch TV network.
1997 Libeskind's almost unrecognizable, the earnest academic geek you suspected was lurking behind those trying-a-bit-too-hard black frames. Except for a segment on the V&A extension (which was just cancelled, it turns out), the rest of the film tries directly or indirectly to understand Libeskind's relationship to the World Trade Center redevelopment.
It does this in an extremely roundabout, understated way; there's no narration, no interviewer, only the words of DL and a couple of critics. But when interwoven with the well-known conflicts over the WTC and Freedom Tower, discussions of the sentimentalist kitsch Jewish Museum and the concurrent, massive redevelopment of Potzdammerplatz, which was studding Berlin with failed skyscrapers by trophy architects, have a disappointing resonance. We should've known.
As it turns out, of course, Libeskind's own footprints downtown are so faint, all New York will be left with is its own crappy version of Potzdammerplatz.
Daniel Libeskind: A True Believer directed by Rob Schroder [Stream the whole thing at VPRO, in English]
