LOS ANGELES - Another dream factory opens in Los Angeles. It is the Academy museum which will open to the public from next September 30th. The magician behind the imposing structure with the shape that looks like an airship is Renzo Piano, who in addition to creating an architectural work has also realized his dream. "If I were not an architect, I would have made films", - he said in fact. And with the Academy Piano museum he combined his two passions.
"It was a pleasure to build this museum - said the architect during the press conference - and I have to thank a thousand people because it is a common effort". He then explained that growing up he had two passions, the sea and cinema.
"Being Genoese - he told ANSA - I grew up in front of the sea, an immense place to explore, and on Sunday there was the cinema which takes people into a fantastic, magical world.
" Then I became an architect - he continues - and I got jealous of the directors. Films are the best way to create emotions, they are an all-encompassing art, no other art form can make people cry for example. "
Located on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the museum is the expression of two visions , the past and the future.
The entrance is from the historic Saban Building, once known as 'May Company Wilshire department store', the building in Streamline Moderno, a derivation of the latest Art Deco style, the encounter is with the historical past of cinema, then you cross a bridge that leads to a spherical building where the future meets. In almost 28 thousand square meters, Piano has exported the concept of a square for a space that wants to be primarily for the community. "It is a structure open to the city, to the people - continues ANSA - without barriers and expresses my conviction that places of worship must be accessible to all".
Divided into six floors within a spherical structure, the museum, directed by Bill Kramer, celebrates Hollywood's past, present and future. It will host permanent and rotating collections and drawing from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences collection, available to the public will be over 12 and a half million photographs, over 230,000 films and videos, 65,000 posters, 85,000 screenplays. Also on display are the special collections of film giants such as Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Hattie McDaniel, Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Lee.
The path inside the museum is also a journey on how the magic called cinema is born, not only the set, the script, the shooting of the actors, the photography but also the costumes, make-up, hairstyles. It will be possible to see up close how an actor is transformed to play a part.
"Was there a need for this museum? - asked Tom Hanks - Yes, of course. It is like a Parthenon of cinema and we must celebrate all that this city (Los Angeles, ed.) Has brought to the world".
Sophia Loren will also be honored during the gala for the inauguration of the museum, who on 25 September will receive the Academy Museum's first 'Visionary Award': an honor reserved for an artist or scholar whose work has made progress in the 'art of cinema'. Loren won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Foreign Film for La Ciociara (1960).