"Paradise Found: Islamic Architecture and Arts"

                                                                                            

"Paradise Found: Islamic Architecture and Arts"
2005, Channel Four Television Corporation
Presenter: Waldemar Januszczak 



  This is the first entry in our blog from a presenter I have grown to love, Waldemar Januszczak. Plucky. Punk. Opinionated. Hysterical. Poet. Humanist. Art Critic. There's a lot of words that you could use to describe his style of presenting, but I think "punk" probably fits the bill well enough. Because of him, I have gained quite a bit of reverence (and revulsion) in what the world knows as "High Art." Waldemar doesn't pull any punches, but he never over steps the bounds into bigoted or insensitive remarks. His depth of knowledge on a wide variety of art styles, and how they fit into the culture and the places they've come to define, is nigh peerless. I've laughed aloud more times at his presentation style than is probably healthy, but it truly serves to draw you in and get you into the frame of mind for the time, place and circumstances under which the art he covers was made; and if that's not what a good presenter does, than I don't know what that is.

 Standing in front of The Great Mosque of Djenne' (aka "The Mud Mosque") where the documentary ultimately ends up, he opens the documentary with a poignant bit of information. While he was making this documentary, terrorist set off explosions in railway terminals throughout Greater London, in what now is known as the "7/7 Attacks." One of the terminals hit was one that his daughter uses(d) every day to go back and forth to school. I'm paraphrasing here, but he goes on: "I spent many horrific hours using unreliable international phone lines trying to find out if my daughter was ok. Turns out she was. But a lot of dark thoughts go through your head in a time like that; "Should I be making this film? Is this the right time for it? Am I the right person to do it?" and having just traveled all around the Islamic world seeing the most wonderful things, the most glorious things that they have made, of course, I knew what the answer was."

  He leaves it at that and begins to weave his tale, starting at the beginning of the religion and its first true mosques. As he weaves the tale of the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East and beyond, he follows the trail of the ideas and elements that have come to define Islamic Art and Architecture. How certain areas were known to be more showy, or more conservative, and how well suited those basic elements were to being expressed within the myriad ways of traditional building/artistic styles found in those different lands.

 He visits a gentleman who still makes the iconic enameled tiles, so full of color and movement, yet intimately interconnected to the next in an almost fractal-like frenzy. The gentleman tells him of the minerals and metal oxides that he dutifully collects in very secret areas, by hand, to continue making them in a way that hasn't changed for centuries. At one point, you see Waldemar sweating in the desert, wearing all black (punks, amiright?) and as he shuffles towards the camera, he reveals a handful of rock quartz. He goes on to explain that the myth behind crystal quartz is that it was "divine ice" locked in the mountains by the gods (or God) and was left there for humans to find and to be worked into some of the most elegant, distinctive and stunningly skilled pieces of utilitarian art ever to have existed. (cups, vases, etc.) And I'm going to leave it at that.

 With a runtime of over 1 hour 30 minutes (closer to 2 hours, depending how you find it; it's on YouTube for certain) there's just so much to see and cover, and with Waldemar weaving the tale, you cannot fathom just how densely packed with information this one is, without seeing it for yourself.  

 I give this one a solid 5/5.
 
 Not everyone likes Waldemar's style; some find him brash, bloviated and sometimes simply, "wrong," but I find him incredibly engaging, all the same. If you don't know a lot about Islam and its art and architecture, you'd be doing yourself a great disservice by not finding a copy of this one. Not only does it cover the basics, it covers a lot of lesser known wonders as well.