Kumu Documentary: Lewerentz’s Divine Darkness
Dir Sven Blume
Sweden 2024, 70 min
In Swedish, with English subtitles
A unique portrait of Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975), one of Sweden’s best-known but most enigmatic architects.
Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975) is internationally renowned as one of Sweden’s greatest architects. He launched his career by winning a competition to design a woodland cemetery south of Stockholm, in partnership with another great Swedish architect, Gunnar Asplund. Skogskyrkogården, where chapels and graves are subtly placed in a landscape of hills and trees, is now a Unesco world heritage site. Other major projects included the Malmo Opera, Malmo Eastern cemetery and St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s Church.
Due to his aversion to being interviewed and recorded, he has long been shrouded in mystery. Recently, however, a treasure trove of film and sound recordings of the ageing Lewerentz was found in a cellar in Lund, and it’s these recordings by the architect Bernt Nyberg that form the basis of this captivating documentary. Lewerentz’s Divine Darkness is a unique portrait of this enigmatic figure of 20th century architecture, whose work still resonates and inspires.
Sven Blume is a film director based in Stockholm, Sweden. He graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2013, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Documentary Film. Since graduation he has been working as a director of documentary film projects, as well as several collaborations in fine arts, architecture, music videos, experimental work, dance videos, animation and fiction. Lewerentz’s Divine Darkness (2024) is his third feature-length documentary film and his second film on architecture (his previous one: Crooked Lines of Beauty – my grandfather the architect Carl Nyrén, 2021).
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