Iranian-born, English resident Zaha Hadid is considered the major woman architect in the world today, and she’s on every list of major architects. A Day with Zaha Hadid (January 19 at 3:10 pm; January 22 at 10:30 am) finds her at an exhibition in Vienna discussing her work of the last decade: art museums in Rome and Cincinnati, a BMW plant in Leipzig, a ski jump in Innsbruck, a science center in Wolfsburg.
Richard Meier in Rome: Building a Church in the City of Churches (January 19 at 2 pm; January 28 at 10:30 am) is about his white modernist Jubilee Church in a working-class suburb of Rome. Looking oddly like a brother of Frank Gehry, Meier does a walking tour of his favorite churches and squares in Rome’s neighborhoods that’s interspersed with a detailed visual description of his sail-inspired church. Álvaro Siza Transforming Reality (January 26 at 6 pm) is about Portugal’s most renowned modernist architect. After the fall of Portugal’s dictatorship, the melding of indigenous architectural forms with international ideas resulted in the Oporto School; Siza is its leading figure.
Mark Kidel’s Norman Foster (January 25 at 8 pm; February 2 at 4 pm) explores the life and work of the British master modernist up to the mid ’90s. Foster’s firm has completed a wide range of projects including the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong, Stansted Airport in Essex, England, and the dome of the new Reichstag in Berlin. Besides Foster himself, the movie includes interviews with his partners and colleagues. The film demonstrates how Sir Norman’s firm is involved in technological innovations and forms dedicated to architectural detailing and craftsmanship.
Watching films about great architects gives us all the opportunity to evaluate the creative process. This MFA film series affords us a detailed picture of some of those who have been and will be shaping the Boston skyline.
Related:
OOH-OO CHILD, Making their mark, Return to the edge of the world, More 
- OOH-OO CHILD
Childhood in America comes under the artist’s gaze in Pine Flat , the fifth film by Sharon Lockhart, and it’s examined with precision and attention to detail.
- Making their mark
Universities need their ivy-covered red-brick towers and classical stone porticoes to remind students of their roots in the past.
- Return to the edge of the world
Photography and new media loom large on the horizon in 2007, with cameras pointed in every direction.
- Fabulous faker
It was a sublime scene, even though the seven-foot-tall painting was cracked, threadbare in places, patched in others, and dulled by a gray-brown murk.
- More than a feeling
The centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs" is Candice Breitz's 2005 Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), a wall of 30 televisions, each showing a different Madonna fan singing a cappella to her 1990 greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. They wear headphones, bob their heads, sing aloud to music we can't hear.
- David Hilliard at Carroll and Sons
It's not every day that a guy like me gets to enjoy a photographic investigation of daddy-boy relationships. . . . well, outside of a naughty format.
- Stone age
The works range from the ninth to the seventh century BC, when Assyria dominated the Near East, ruling lands from present-day Iran to Israel to Egypt.
- Exposures
In "Karsh 100: A Biography in Images," which is now up at the Museum of Fine Arts, his iconic shots of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway are defining portraits of the men in all their crusty manliness.
- Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff
The Museum of Fine Arts did big things with Napoleon and Edward Hopper, pictures of prostitutes graced the walls of Boston’s two biggest art museums, and all hell broke loose when the Mooninites invaded.
- Show fetish
Ever since Salvatore Ferragamo designed the first stiletto heel in 1955, podiatrists have faced a steady stream of female patients seeking physical relief from their devotion to fashion over function.
- Going deep
A gaggle of big solo shows share the art waves with that powerful influx of computer-reliant art known as the Boston Cyberarts Festival this season.
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