Ferrera Knows Orange Rhymes with Dissent

Antonio Ferrera still sounds tired. Reflecting on the documentary The Gates, a chronicle of environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s February 2005 installation, the co-director of the film admitted with a surprising amount of candor right at the beginning of our interview: “I didn’t know what I was in for. I didn’t know it was going to be so hard.”

It is this word—“hard”—that unites the 98-minute documentary with its subject, “The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005,” an installation of 7,503 gates on 23 miles of walkways in Central Park. Nothing about the documentary or the artwork it captures is easy. The film, which premieres tonight on HBO and will be screened at the Met on March 1, follows Christo and Jeanne-Claude on their 26-year journey to line Central Park’s paths with saffron-colored gates.

Ferrera explained that a lack of funds and the sheer scale of the project made it “scary and difficult.” The film is the product of nearly 700 hours of footage and 2 years of editing. The art project itself, having been rejected by the city in 1981, was realized only after copious meetings, three mayoral terms, 26 years, and approximately $21 million. Watching the film, too, is no easy feat—the first 25 minutes feature a litany of meetings and lawyers and city officials with furrowed brows. But the film beautifully mirrors the process of “The Gates” itself—after muddling through what is termed in the film as a “bureaucratic horror,” the payoff is stunning.

According to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the process of gaining approval for their projects is an integral, but not central, aspect of the art itself. Employing one of her favorite metaphors, Jeanne-Claude explained in an interview: “The process of being pregnant for nine months is definitely part of having a child. But that process of nine months is not the aim. The aim is that at the end of the pregnancy, finally the woman will see the baby.”

This child, however, had a particularly short life span—the gates stood in their full billowing glory for only 14 days in February 2005. The film dutifully captures the particularly tumultuous pregnancy. Roomfuls of people (all dressed in delectably ugly ’80s attire) nearly descend into shouting matches arguing over the propriety of what one speaker at NYU called “an act of cultural dictatorship.”

These objections are interesting mainly because they are so emphatic. When the documentary picks up in 2003, the year mayor Bloomberg approved the project, some New Yorkers have not yet begun to feel any more kindly towards the installation. One disgruntled park visitor, responding to a camerawoman’s assertion that the Gates are for everyone, says defiantly, “If I took a shit on your lawn, and I say it’s beautiful, is that for everybody?”

The film chronicles not only the evolution of the artwork, but also the evolution of public opinion. “That’s what I used to get me out of this pickle of sorting out how to tell this story of this event in an observational way that is not didactic, but allows the viewer to experience it in the first person way that we experienced it,” Ferrera said.
As the movie progresses, the grumpy—but nonetheless entertaining—insults dwindle. On the official opening day of the installation, when the fabric panels unfurl from their metal frames, close-up shots capture the pink-nosed faces of excited onlookers.

Although Christo and Jeanne-Claude resist the notion that they created “the Gates” as a gift to the city of New York, its citizens act the part of anxious recipients. “I started to cry on blossoming day,” said Ferrera. “The last time people were looking up they were seeing a lot of bad shit happening a few years before.”

The sweeping, languishing shots of the gates are the most memorable part of the film. For art buffs—or anyone remotely interested in the work—each new shot will provoke a sharp gasp of air. Pretty much everyone else will start fidgeting until the interviews or clips of visitors in the park resume. This disparity is heightened by the fact that the co-directors, Albert Maysles and Ferrera, often refrain from pairing music with the shots. The sound of the wind is so intimately connected to the motion of the panels, though, that it’s hard to imagine looking at them without the ambient noise.

Aerial views, taken from a helicopter, reveal the saffron colored fabric rippling like the surface of water in a continuous ribbon around the park. Close-up shots, like the loving images of a naked back in a romantic movie, display the texture and motion of the fabric. (But don’t mistake the color for a more familiar hue. When a question posed in the interview referred to the gates as orange, Jeanne-Claude was quick to correct: “They aren’t orange, they’re saffron.”)

These shots reveal the documentary as a work of art in its own right. Even if you visited them in 2005, the directors offer (literally) a new perspective on the Gates—only the eye of an artist could have captured the Gates’ vacillating reflections in the sparkling water. “Sometimes I’d spend just an hour looking at a puddle,” said Ferrera. “It had nothing to do with landscape, nothing to do with anything except the exhilaration of ‘Oh, look at that color going straight into my retina and then into my heart.’”

When it comes down to it, this is what both the installation and the documentary are about—the interplay between the visual and the emotional. If you don’t already care about this kind of art, The Gates probably won’t convince you. But if you’re already a convert, the film is a magical account of a magical two weeks. According to Christo, “The rectangular shape of our gates reflects the rectangular shape of the hundred city blocks surrounding central park.” But the artists maintain that there is no deeper meaning to their endeavor. “The meaning of a Mozart Sonata, can you tell us the meaning?” Jeanne-Claude asked. She waited for a response, then continued: “No. It’s just a work of art.”