Once it's done, this terrace will give the visitor the best view of the heart of the film industry. On the left the villas on the slopes of Beverly Hills. Straight on the Hollywood sign. On the right is the Griffith Planetarium, that iconic backdrop - from James Dean's "... because they do not know what they're doing" to "La La Land".
"Is not that fantastic?" Kathy DeShaw asks, stepping at windy heights all the way to the edge of the terrace. "It's the best panorama."
DeShaw is the director of the Academy of Motion Pictures: the newest museum in Los Angeles, the first in the world to honor the history of the film industry while preserving its future with memorabilia such as Dorothy's red "Wizard." from Oz ", but also works by Japanese anime artists, Afro-American cinema art and virtual reality installations.
When it's done. More than three years after the foundation stone was laid, the 400-million-dollar film palace of star architect Renzo Piano is still under construction, but will now be inaugurated at the end of the year. "We're heading for the finish line," says DeShaw.
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Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: Hollywood's Big Cinema BallEven the terrace is so far only a rough concrete slab. Soon, she will cling to a gigantic glass dome, as an architectural summit and venue for Oscar parties. The result is a movie theater with 1000 seats and a nine meters high, 20 meters long screen.
This is big cinema. "We want to show the power and magic of the film," says museum director Kerry Brougher. Complemented by private collections and the enormous fund of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), which awards the Oscars, the museum tries to bring about what the gala often fails: It should inspire for the film.
"We offer something for everyone," says German curator Jessica Niebel. "Historians, Hollywood insiders, fans." Niebel, who previously worked at the Frankfurt Film Museum, pays off in all three categories and can hardly believe that she has landed here right now, right in the middle of it: "Somehow madness, I still think so."
Moisture-proof stilts, modern cultivation
The hopes are even more striking this year, as the Oscar show on Sunday threatens to reveal the existential crisis in Hollywood, again. The museum was designed long before the current debates and hashtags, #MeToo, #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite, against rampant quota panic and questions about the relevance of the Oscars.
The idea of setting a memorial to the film industry has been following the Ampas since the 1960s. The present museum was conceived in 2012, according to designs pianos, which became famous with the Center Pompidou: The monumental sandstone building of the former department store chain May - which dates from 1939, the same year as the "Wizard of Oz" - he sat on four Balancing the earthquake-resistant stilts, a modern extension.
As with a big-budget movie, the cost swelled quickly from $ 200 to nearly $ 400 million, with donations beginning to stall, even in super-rich Hollywood. In the meantime, says Brougher, 80 percent of capital requirements are covered.
To bring in even more, they market the 63 pillars of the construction for one million dollars each to founders, who dedicate them to film pioneers. One dedicated his column to the diva Sophia Loren, who won the 1962 Oscar as the first foreign-language actress. The 84-year-old came by in person six weeks ago, slipped into a yellow construction vest and chose a column that "Italy is closest to". DeShaw captured the scene with a photo showing her on her iPhone.
30,000 square meters of space, more than 2,500 exhibits
The scale of the museum is unprecedented. 30,000 square meters of space, more than 2,500 exhibits: Private estates and finds from the Academy archive, such as a camera of the silent film star Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo costumes from "Mata Hari", scenes from "Casablanca" and "Psycho", the original spaceship model from "2001: A Space Odyssey", countless Oscars, "King Kong's" hydraulic hand, the head of the "Alien" monster and a fiberglass shark from the "Great White Shark" found on a car scrapyard.
But Hollywood is not everything. The first special exhibition is a retrospective of the Japanese cult animator Hayao Miyazaki, followed by a unique show of black cinema from 1900 to 1970, created far away from the formerly mostly white film metropolis.
The permanent exhibition will also trace the film's technological history, from cinematographs to digital projectors, from the beginning of the Hollywood studio system to its demise, from movie palaces to streaming services. "The movie started long before the cinema," says Niebel. "The first projectionists tinkered over fairs."
And the movie is likely to outlast the cinema. At least that's what the Academy Museum thought: One of its most generous sponsors is Ted Sarandos, the program director of the cinema killer Netflix.