E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the house By The Sea
DOCUMENTARY | ENGLISH | 89 min
A love triangle of jealousy in the Parisian art scene of the 1930s is brought to life in a stylish docufiction about iconic artist and architect Eileen Gray, who built her modernist dream house on the Riviera, only to be upstaged by Le Corbusier.
Eileen Gray had a truly eminent sense of design. The Irish artist and architect created some of the most iconic furniture of the 20th century, so when she focussed her unique artistic vision on developing a house for herself on the Riviera in 1929, the result was a modernist triumph. A house and a work of art in one, overlooking the sun-sparkled infinity of the Mediterranean. The house is named E.1027, a cryptic contraction of the names of Gray and her lover, Romanian architect Jean Badovici. But when the Swiss-French star architect Le Corbusier learns of the house, he becomes obsessed – perhaps because Gray breathes light, air and soul into her building, which is not just a machine to live in.
‘E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea’ reconstructs the dramatic story of Gray and the house that Le Corbusier amazingly managed to convince the world he had built himself. A stunningly beautiful and cinematic docufiction where the inspiration from Gray is present in lines, colours and shapes – but where they serve the narrative of a brilliant female artist who spent a long life in the shadow of her male colleagues.
DIRECTORS Beatrice Minger & Christoph Schaub
CAST Natalie Radmall-Quirke, Axel Moustache, Charles Morillon
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION Switzerland
with the support of Swiss Films
SCREENINGS + EVENTS
FROM JUNE 13
ICA, London
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Rio Cinema, London
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Cine Lumiere, London
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Bertha DocHouse, London
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The Lexi, London
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FilmBath - Museum of Architecture
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Chichester at New Park Cinema
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Electric Palace, Hastings
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MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
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FROM JUNE 20
Bertha DocHouse, London
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Cine Lumiere, London
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ICA, London
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★★★★
“E.1027 represents more than just architecture; it embodies the class
tensions, artistic rivalries and personal struggles that defined
Eileen Gray’s Modernist legacy”
— The Upcoming
★★★★
The great triumph of Beatrice Minger's film is that, while what we hear is firmly rooted in actual texts and quotations, visually the piece is consistently stylised throughout
— Film Review
★★★★
“A great introduction to the designer, it reaffirms the clarity of her vision”
— The Reviews Hub
★★★★
“She’d approve of a tribute such as this, what with its stark but elliptical manoeuvres, its grace of form and composition, and the way in which it seems at once modern but somehow lived in”
— Sunday Independent
AWARDS + FESTIVALS
CPH: DOX
World Premiere - Official Selection
Zurich Film Festival
Special Mention: Critics’ Award
Munich International Film Festival
Official Selection
Dublin International Film Festival
Official Selection