Designs tailored to the challenge

THE production design exhibit at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Fourth Floor Gallery is a departure from its recent explorations of the theme, says academy curator Ellen Harrington.

“We have typically done a biographical show or have done highlights of the academy collection on production design,” she says, “and we have done solo shows like on Hans Drier and Dante Ferretti.”

But the latest exhibition, “Moving Spaces: Production Design + Film,” is the first that approaches production design on a more conceptual level, looking at a “way of designing film in accordance with the production challenges and the type of spaces that the production designer is presented with in the script.”

Presented in association with the Goethe Institut of Los Angeles, “Moving Spaces” was organized by the Berlin Film Museum and was presented last year as part of the 2005 Berlin Film Festival.

The academy is the only American stop on the multi-city international tour of the exhibition, which continues here through April 16.

The gallery is divided into five conceptual areas -- “Labyrinths,” “Private Spaces,” “Transit Spaces,” “Spaces of Power” and “Stages” -- that organize 120 designs and drawings by 28 production designers. The exhibition also features text about the films and biographies of the designers, along with set models, photographs and video clips.

“We have things from the 1930s all the way up to the present,” says Harrington. “We also have a very high concentration of European films. Another big advantage to this exhibition is that we often don’t have access to the European materials. We do exhibitions that have to do with American production design. This has material from a lot of European archives and [designers] who have worked primarily with Germany, Scandinavia and France.”

Among the films represented are 1930’s “The Blue Angel,” 1933’s “Design for Living,” 1948’s “The Red Shoes,” 1960’s best picture winner “The Apartment,” Jacques Tati’s classic French comedies “Mon Oncle” and “Playtime,” 1979’s “Alien,” 1982’s “Fanny and Alexander,” 1987’s “Wings of Desire,” and “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Terminal,” both from 2004.

Rounding out the exhibition are filmed interviews with such designers as Ken Adam, Anna Asp, Ferretti, Alex McDowell and Jacques Saulnier.

*

‘Moving Spaces: Production Design + Film’

Where: Fourth Floor Gallery, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

When: Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; weekends, noon to 6 p.m.

Ends: April 16

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 247-3000,

or www.oscars.org