|
"I BUILD THE TOWER"
Written, Directed and Produced by
Edward Landler and Brad Byer
Barely five feet tall, the uneducated Rodia worked from the 1920’s to the 1950’s without helpers or scaffolding to build unique and majestic spires of reinforced concrete rising to a hundred feet, decorated with a mosaic of tile, seashells, pottery, ceramics, rocks and glass – even broken 7-Up and Milk of Magnesia bottles. Transcending the category of “outsider” or “folk” art, Rodia’s Watts Towers have come to be recognized as an artistic and engineering masterpiece world-wide.
Born Sabato Rodia, Sam had joined the “new immigration” through Ellis Island into the “melting pot” of the United States. His early years in America were spent moving west, finally settling with his wife in Oakland to work on a
construction crew building the University of California, Berkeley, campus. After surviving the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Rodia became an abusive drunk and disappeared into a life of riding the rails.
Rodia reappeared completely sober in Southern California where he bought a triangular-shaped property in Watts and built his “Watts Towers” while working a full time job. After World War II, he witnessed Watts change from a working class community of whites, blacks, Latinos and Japanese into a predominantly African-American community that deteriorated into a ghetto.
Rodia abandoned the completed towers in 1954 and returned to the San Francisco Bay area, as he stated, to die among his relatives. But, a controversy was raging in his own family - was Uncle Sam a great artist or a bum? His nephew, Nick Calicura, said of him, “To this day, I can’t understand if the man was a genius or he was crazy.”
In 1959, the Building and Safety Department of Los Angeles issued a job order to “demolish and remove the dangerous towers” and attempted to pull them down with a crane. Instead, with no conscious intent to do so, Rodia and his towers triumphed over bureaucracy and achieved lasting recognition in the history of
modern art and architecture. The 1965 Watts Riots left Rodia’s towers untouched and they became a symbol of freedom and individual initiative for the community in which they still stand.
“As time goes on”, eminent futurist, engineer and structuralist R. Buckminster Fuller noted in his last interview, filmed exclusively for this project, “they begin to reveal to humanity the soul of the artist.” According to Fuller, the Watts Towers embody the universal structural principles found in nature and demonstrate the power of individual initiative to effect change in the world.
Comparing the Watts Towers to the Statue of Liberty and the Gateway Arch of St. Louis, Los Angeles historian Mike Davis, author of “City of Quartz”, says “it’s been Rodia's towers which ordinary people in the city have embraced as its most profound, most poignant symbol.”
Rodia great-nephew Brad Byer’s access to family members and materials and Edward Landler’s long association with the Watts community have provided them with a wealth of archival film footage and interviews to go along with their production footage shot in Naples and the southern Italian region of Campania where Rodia was born, the San Francisco Bay area where Rodia lived before and after his years in Los Angeles, and, of course, at the Watts Towers.
The film relies on audio interviews of Rodia from the early 1960’s to chronicle his redemption from alcoholism and despair to a fierce determination to build “something big.” Rodia’s own words offer the shrewd and haunting perspective of an “Old World” peasant living in but never assimilating into modern industrial America.
The DVD also features the complete 40-minute interview of R. Buckminster Fuller, excerpts of which appear in “I Build the Tower”. In this, his last interview, filmed three months before his death in July, 1983, Mr. Fuller provides an analysis of Rodia’s artistic and engineering genius and its significance in art history and the world.
Also participating in the film are Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre, musician Johnny Otis, vocalist Dwight Trible and artist John Outterbridge.
“I Build the Tower” qualified for Oscar consideration at the Westside Pavilion’s Landmark Theatre in Los Angeles and has been showcased at the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and at the Vancouver International Film Centre’s Vancity Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its numerous film festival screenings include:
* Documentary Fortnight, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City
* The Environmental Film Festival, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
* The Pan-African Film Festival, Los Angeles
* The Los Angeles Harbor International Film Festival
* International Festival for Films on Art in Montreal
* Leeds International Film Festival, England
* Festival di Palazzo Venezia, Rome, and Biografilm Festival, Bologna, Italy
“I Build the Tower” was the opening presentation of “Art and Migration: Sabato Rodia and the Watts Towers of Los Angeles”, an international conference at the University of Genoa, Italy, in April, 2009, co-sponsored by U.C.L.A.’s International Institute.
Another international conference on Rodia and the Watts Towers is planned to be held in Los Angeles in 2010. Keep checking this website for more details and for news of upcoming screenings of "I Build the Tower".
 Recognized by Steve Rosen on IndieWire as one of the best five undistributed films of 2006, “I Build the Tower” is now being distributed by the National Film Network www.nationalfilmnetwork.com/Store
 |
Leonard Maltin's Video Review of
“I Build The Tower”
 |
|
|
“To see the beauty of nature and understand the principles. That’s what Sam, Simon Rodia did... Sam will rank not just in our century, but rank with the sculptors of all history.”
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
|
|
|
|
|
