Master Design Series produces and distributes the award winning documentary films of Zara Muren ASLA. Her major documentaries are Dream of The Sea Ranch (1994) and The Landscape Architecture of Roberto Burle Marx (1989) both made with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. It has been Muren's approach to show a comprehensive and poetically crafted view as producer, director, writer, camerawoman, and editor.
Charles Moore in conversation about The Sea Ranch
Condominium Courtyard
Roberto Burle Marx and lotus in his water garden
Sitio Santo Antonio da Bica
Zara is a landscape architect and documentary filmmaker. While working as a professor of landscape architecture, she became interested in film as a medium for communicating works of significance to environmental design students and practitioners. She saw that the moving imagery of film would be ideally suited to evoking the temporal and dimensional qualities of designed environments, and that on-camera interviews with the visionary designers of work shown would provide an invaluable window on their creative process.
Zara filming Copacabana Promenade
Key collaborators on the documentary films were Sound Recordist Jose Araujo, Interview Camerawoman Denise Zmekhol and Additional Cinematographer Hiro Narita.
Jose Araujo, Roberto Burle Marx and Zara setting up to film an interview Sitio Santo Antonio da Bica
The documentaries have been an inspirational and educational resource in the professions of landscape architecture, architecture and planning, most often for university or office audiences. Their interest has endured in five continents where they continue to be distributed.
Initially available on videotape, both documentaries have now been transferred to DVD with image enhancement, chapter points added and a summary of Contents.