KANEKO & Lauritzen Gardens hosted a special screening of Fall Winter Spring Summer Fall: Five Seasons with Piet Oudolf.
An immersive and meditative documentary that reveals how the revolutionary landscape designer, Piet Oudolf, upends our conventional notions of nature, public space, and, ultimately, beauty itself. Following the screening will be a discussion with Piet Oudolf, filmmaker Thomas Piper, Lauritzen Garden’s Spencer Crews and KANEKO’s Chris Hochstetler.
“For me, garden design isn’t just about plants, it is about emotion, atmosphere, a sense of contemplation. You try to move people with what you do. You look at this, and it goes deeper than what you see. It reminds you of something in the genes — nature, or the longing for nature.” – Piet Oudolf
About Fall Winter Spring Summer Fall
After completing a feature documentary on New York’s High Line, award-winning filmmaker Thomas Piper met the inspirational designer and plantsman, Piet Oudolf, and the idea for a new project was born. The documentary, FALL WINTER SPRING SUMMER FALL, immerses viewers in Oudolf’s work and takes us inside his creative process, from his beautifully abstract sketches, to theories on beauty, to the ecological implications of his ideas. Intimate discussions take place through all fours seasons in Piet’s own gardens at Hummelo, and on visits to his signature public works in New York, Chicago, and the Netherlands, as well as to the far-flung locations that inspire his genius, including desert wildflowers in West Texas and post-industrial forests in Pennsylvania. As a narrative thread, the film also follows Oudolf as he designs and installs a major new garden at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, a gallery and arts center in Southwest England, a garden he considers his best work yet. Piet Oudolf has radically redefined what gardens can be. As Rick Darke, the famous botanist, says to Piet in the film, “your work teaches us to see what what we have been unable to see.” Through poetic cinematography and unique access, FALL WINTER SPRING SUMMER FALL will reveal all that Piet sees, and celebrate all that we as viewers have been unable to see.
About Piet Oudolf
Piet Oudolf was born in 1944 in Haarlem, Netherlands. Since 1982, he has lived and worked in Hummelo, a tiny village in east Netherlands, where he started a nursery with his wife Anja, to grow perennials. His garden has since become renowned for its radical approach and ideas about planting design. Oudolf also co-founded Future Plants, a company specializing in selecting, growing, breeding and protecting plants for landscaping and public areas. Oudolf`s recent projects include No. 5 Culture Chanel, Paris, France; The High Line, New York NY; Lurie Garden, Millennium Park, Chicago IL; Serpentine Gallery, London, England, and the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Oudolf is also a successful author, having co-written numerous books such as; “Planting: A New Perspective” (2013); “Landscapes in Landscapes” (2011) and “Gardening with Grasses” (1998). In his 35-year career, Oudolf has achieved international acclaim, and has recently been awarded an Honorary Fellowship from RIBA for developing radical ideas in Planting Design (2012) and the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation Award (2013).
About Thomas Piper
Thomas Piper is an award-winning non-fiction filmmaker, specializing in documenting the contemporary arts. He has directed, photographed and edited over 30 films on subjects including the visual artists Pablo Picasso, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Alex Katz, and Kiki Smith; architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Peter Eisenman, Jeanne Gang, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Thom Mayne, Jean Nouvel, and Steven Holl; and the writer James Salter. Thomas is Director of Production for the Checkerboard Film Foundation, responsible for directing, shooting, and editing long-format documentaries on individuals who have made important contributions to the contemporary arts.
