Burning with Life

This spectacular collage of music and images charts one period of great and momentous change at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth - the time of the coming of electricity, the development of telecommunications, the invasion of advertising, the birth of film and aviation, and the spread of consumerism and the automobile. The camera discovers and explores the new style in fine and applied art that influenced all these innovations and is mirrored in them. In Italy this new style is called `Liberty,' in France Art Nouveau, in England `New Style,' in Germany Jugendstil, in Austria Secession, in Spain Modernismo. Many names for one and the same upheaval, for a major impetus by two extreme creative opposites. In order to give an idea of these opposites, the film observes two strongly contrasted manifestations within the same movement: the Glasgow School, with the moving story of Mackintosh, and the Modernismo of the Barcelona School. It is the confrontation of two personalities, two tendencies in architecture and works of art - both in the musical and in the visual sphere.

© 1998-2001 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.