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Towering above the nearby blocks in the Eixample district of Barcelona, the Sagrada Família is unmistakable for its colossal scale and its convention-defying architecture. Looking like a Gothic cathedral seen through a surreal fairytale filter, this is the most audacious project of the influential Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926). It is also, more than 135 years after construction began and long after Gaudí’s death, quite visibly still a work in progress.
The London and Barcelona-based director David Cerqueiro’s film Stone Cut is a brief profile of the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo, who, for 40 years, has made finishing Gaudí’s would-be masterpiece his life’s work. Capturing the Sagrada Família with due splendour, the short documentary chronicles how, in committing to transform Barcelona’s once ‘abandoned ruin’ into its crown jewel, Sotoo felt called to stone, and even converted to Catholicism to better know the mind and inspiration of its original architect.
Director: David Cerqueiro
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Family life
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Archaeology
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Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
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Childhood and adolescence
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Meaning and the good life
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Computing and artificial intelligence
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Art
A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size
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History
There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look
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Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
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