L
A
Monument
To Dad
Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's search
for his architect father and for his
Jewish identity.
GARY ROSENBLATT
The Jewish Week
L
ouis Kahn, one of the most celebrated
architects of the 20th century, died of a
heart attack, alone and without ID, in the
men's room at New York City's Penn
Station in 1974 at the age of 73.
Ever since then his son, Nathaniel, who was 11 at
the time, has sought to better understand the highly
talented and deeply complex man who hardly
acknowledged his illegitimate offspring.
Of his father, Nathaniel Kahn knew the myth; he
wanted to know the man. Five years ago he set out to
make a documentary film about the work and life of
Louis Kahn, and his quest has taken him down many
paths. It has led him to professional fame and success
with the critically acclaimed film My Architect, which
opens in Detroit this week, and to a warm and close
friendship with a Jewish communal executive who
helped raise the funds to make the film possible.
Recently, Nathaniel, now 41, and Darrell
Friedman, who recently retired as the top profes-
sional of the Associated Jewish Charities, the
Baltimore federation, talked about their unlikely
coming together — the Protestant-raised filmmaker
and the Jewish professional — and how during the
process of making the film Nathaniel has come to
explore his Jewish roots more deeply.
"This was a very personal journey for me,"
Nathaniel explained, "and to a large degree it was
Jewish philanthropy that made this possible." He
credited Friedman with not only helping to raise
much of the approximately $800,000 needed for the
film — Friedman is listed as an executive producer
— but with "helping to connect me to Jewish val-
ues, like the sense of giving back and leaving the
world a better place."
Gary Rosenblatt is the editor and publisher of the
Jewish Week, in which this article first appeared
ew.
hi p: The filmmaker with the famous father he barely kn
Building a friends
Friedman said he was taken by the young man's
intellect, charisma and biography from their first
meeting four years ago, arranged by the friend of a
friend of Friedman's son. "I was totally captivated,"
he said, "and I wanted to help."
It was his entree into the world of Jewish philanthro-
py that resulted in Nathaniel receiving significant fund-
ing from several Jewish family charities and a grant
from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.
The nearly two-hour film, subtitled "A Son's
Journey," is a low-key but powerful documentary
that manages to weave together Nathaniel's personal
attempt to learn who his father was and an apprecia-
tion of Louis Kahn's works. Those include the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, Calif, art centers at Yale and in
Fort Worth, and his most ambitious and final proj-
ect, the national capital buildings in Dacca,
Bangladesh, whose presence takes on an almost spir-
itual quality of quiet strength.
The film begins with Nathaniel recounting how
he read in the newspaper of his father's death and
wondered why his name was not listed as a surviv-
ing child. He came with his mother to the funeral,
though they were not invited, and learned that
Louis Kahn led more than one secret life. He was
married and had a daughter. But he had long-term
relationships with two other women, each of whom
had a child by him. The three "families" lived within
a few miles of each other in Philadelphia, but did
not cross paths until Kahn's funeral.
Nathaniel recalls that though he only saw his father
about once a week, their visits together were memo-
rable. In making the film, he sought to fill in some of
the major gaps in his father's life, but much remains a
mystery. One senses that the son came to know the
father through the buildings he created as much as
through the colleagues with whom Nathaniel spoke.
Standing at the Salk Institute, overlooking the
Pacific and feeling the majesty, of the space,
Nathaniel observed that "for the first time, I felt I
MONUMENT
on page 48
3/ 5
2004
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