Family and fabrication: a daughter’s eye on her architect mother’s life

When “Ada: My Mother the Architect” arrives at the Millerton Moviehouse this weekend, it may not immediately seem like your typical holiday fare. But looks can be deceiving. As the title suggests, director Yael Melamede has made her mother’s extraordinary architectural achievements the subject of a documentary. Ada Karmi Melamade is a mother of three, a central figure of Israel’s contemporary Bauhaus design, and a trailblazer for women who has reached dizzying professional heights over the course of a long and storied career.

What the title leaves unsaid, however, is the difficult personal choices the architect had to make along the path to success. Motherhood couldn’t always take priority — and while all’s well that ends well in this stirring portrait of family and fabrication, that underlying tension elevates what might have otherwise become a study in monotonous adulation.

The buildings are the easy part: Ada’s creations are unequivocally beautiful, and her daughter is up to the challenge of capturing their essence on film. Using a combination of unique perspective, time-lapse sequences and archival material, we’re treated to a symphony of light.

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“I think that with one beam of light that falls right, it can change everything,” Melamade says, and we see her buildings — Jerusalem’s Supreme Court building and the Ben Gurion Airport among them —bloom and glow in some of the most breathtaking sequences.

But the film’s heart lies in the sometimes strained relationship between mother and daughter. “How [did] you love me for so many years?” Ada asks her daughter during one interview. “I wasn’t with you.” It’s a cutting message that has special resonance during the holiday season: Where are the lines between work and life, and how do we know when they need to be redrawn?

“Ada: My Mother the Architect” will screen at the Moviehouse in Millerton on Saturday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. A Q&A with director Yael Melamede will follow the film. Tickets at themoviehouse.net.

Graham Corrigan is a writer and musician from Philadelphia currently living in Lakeville.