Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud | |
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Directed by | Karen Goodman Kirk Simon |
Produced by | Karen Goodman Kirk Simon |
Narrated by | Morley Safer [1] |
Cinematography | Buddy Squires |
Edited by | Sara Fishko |
Music by | Brian Keane |
Production company | Simon & Goodman Picture Company |
Release date |
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Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud is a 1996 PBS American Masters documentary drama film on the inventor, visionary, and thinker R. Buckminster Fuller produced and directed by Academy Award nominees Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.
Fuller, who died in 1983, is considered by some to be one of the 20th century's most noteworthy, controversial, and creative thinkers. The film looks at his unconventional life, his innovations, and his radical view of the contemporary world. Best known as the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, Fuller had many other inventions, such as an air-streamed three-wheeled car and many other ideas of how to "benefit mankind."
The film includes interviews with Philip Johnson, Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Arthur Penn. It is narrated by Morley Safer, with Spalding Gray as the voice of Buckminster Fuller.
The filmmakers were the first journalists to have open access to the vast collections of Fuller's personal papers. As Fuller was widely documented, the film includes extensive archival footage of Fuller from many sources.
The film premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996 [2] and was nominated for an Emmy for Best Cultural/Historical Documentary the same year.
Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
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James Tennant Baldwin, often known as Jay Baldwin or J. Baldwin, was an American industrial designer and writer. Baldwin was a student of Buckminster Fuller; Baldwin's work was inspired by Fuller's principles and, in the case of some of Baldwin's published writings, he popularized and interpreted Fuller's ideas and achievements. In his own right, Baldwin was a figure in American designers' efforts to incorporate solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. In his career, being a fabricator was as important as being a designer. Baldwin was noted as the inventor of the "Pillow Dome", a design that combines Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome with panels of inflated ETFE plastic panels.
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The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
"Thinking Out Loud" is a 2014 single by Ed Sheeran.
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