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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek

(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray

Featuring: Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray’s documentary deposits us into gently undulating art school buildings in Havana, Cuba, that have been abandoned, are desolate and overgrown, and are, most certainly, unfinished. Juxtaposing 1959 footage of Castro overthrowing Batista and other images of the passion and spirit of that revolution with interviews with Cuban artists, “Unfinished Spaces” measures the unrealized potential of the revolution on the art scene and, in particular, the art schools of Cuba.

Castro commissioned the schools with the goal of transforming what was once a bourgeois golf course into a collection of the best art buildings in the world. Given two months to finish the drafting, architects came together with students and unleashed unbridled enthusiasm into expressions of modernism and...

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek

(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray

Featuring: Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray’s documentary deposits us into gently undulating art school buildings in Havana, Cuba, that have been abandoned, are desolate and overgrown, and are, most certainly, unfinished. Juxtaposing 1959 footage of Castro overthrowing Batista and other images of the passion and spirit of that revolution with interviews with Cuban artists, “Unfinished Spaces” measures the unrealized potential of the revolution on the art scene and, in particular, the art schools of Cuba.

Castro commissioned the schools with the goal of transforming what was once a bourgeois golf course into a collection of the best art buildings in the world. Given two months to finish the drafting, architects came together with students and unleashed unbridled enthusiasm into expressions of modernism and...

Making its world premiere at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival, “Unfinished Spaces” visits Cuba’s National Art Schools, visionary buildings constructed during the heady first days of the Cuban Revolution. The campus lies in ruins now, though art students still study there. Here, documentarians Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray write for Moving Pictures about meeting the architects behind the project and the opportunity to restore their utopia.

By Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray (directors of “Unfinished Spaces”)

(from the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Alysa Nahmias

“Unfinished Spaces” is as much about nature and human nature as it is about architecture. It depicts the organic aging and inevitable decay of all people, places and politics over time.

In spring 2001 in Havana, we first had the opportunity to visit the National Art Schools — organic, modern brick buildings, now in ruins but still home to Cuba’s best and brightest art students. After touring the campus,...

Making its world premiere at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival, “Unfinished Spaces” visits Cuba’s National Art Schools, visionary buildings constructed during the heady first days of the Cuban Revolution. The campus lies in ruins now, though art students still study there. Here, documentarians Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray write for Moving Pictures about meeting the architects behind the project and the opportunity to restore their utopia.

By Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray (directors of “Unfinished Spaces”)

(from the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Alysa Nahmias

“Unfinished Spaces” is as much about nature and human nature as it is about architecture. It depicts the organic aging and inevitable decay of all people, places and politics over time.

In spring 2001 in Havana, we first had the opportunity to visit the National Art Schools — organic, modern brick buildings, now in ruins but still home to Cuba’s best and brightest art students. After touring the campus,...