Presentazione

Italy/ 65’ / Colour / 2009

Genre Documentary
Director Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva
Production company Fantastificio, Settimarte
Website fantastificio.com

January 2007. On a cold winter’s day in Rome, my father slips and breaks his femur. Since he lives alone in his office, which also functions as his home, this eighty-year old man had to wait several hours before one of his six children found him lying on the floor in agony and fear. Later in hospital, while still waiting for a bed in a busy corridor, my father is smiling and chatting away. He is amused by the attention of the nurses and of my camera and is already on the phone to his assistants, giving out orders. The House of the Father starts off as a straightforward documentary portrait of my father, an old Italian architect and disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. From a “direct cinema” style, the film gradually develops into father-son confrontation where I initially struggle to make my presence heard. The House of the Father follows my father’s hyperactive race against time to finish his architectural oeuvre as I attempt to stop him and question him. Uniting my film-making with his architecture, this film aims to document my search for identity and personal growth, hand in hand with the construction of the last buildings of his life and the completion of his oeuvre.

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