{image1}Nathaniel Kahn didn't know his father, celebrated architect Louis I. Kahn, all that well. They met a number of times and Nathaniel thinks he remembers their times together quite well.
However, as he moves through his quest to learn more about his father in his documentary film, "My Architect: A Son's Journey," he realizes that memory may not always serve one well.
Kahn has no trouble finding many people who were close to his father, who was born on an island of Estonia and came to America as a youth, but not before an accident with a stove that led to massive scarring on his face and hands. Never a looker, Kahn developed a charm and charisma that made him popular, especially with women.
And women are the crux of the younger Kahn's film.
While Louis' father thinks his son has been ruined by his accident, his mother believes it marks him for greatness later in life. Perhaps both were correct.
Louis struggled to find his place in the world and didn't really develop an architectural style until he was nearly 50. Despite the acclaim he earned with his plans, only a handful of his buildings ever were constructed. But, according to I.M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stern, Frank Gehry and other prominent colleagues who appear in the film, those works were massively influential and groundbreaking.
In his personal life, Louis charmed women, but perhaps too much. He was married to a woman for a large portion of his life and had a daughter. Yet an affair with another woman produced a second daughter and an affair with Nathaniel's mother led to, well, Nathaniel.
The women in his life knew of one another and did not get along and Louis struggled to keep these disparate parts of his life separate, with varying degrees of success. But it becomes to clear to Nathaniel during this journey that his mother was never well treated by his father and the latter certainly did not appear to be planning to leave his wife to move in with Nathaniel and his mother.
The journey is a powerful one for Nathaniel, who learns both the good and the bad about his father and comes to understand that they are both part of being human.
The film is an engaging one, despite Nathaniel's tendency to make himself, rather than his father, the focus.
And there is a wonderful moment of humor when Nathaniel, visiting one of his father's buildings in Bangladesh, tells a group of men that his is the son of the architect. "You're father was Louis Farrakhan?," a man asks, wide-eyed and impressed.
"My Architect" opened Friday, April 2 at Landmark's Oriental Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
