Studio Orsopolis and Divided Line Production
Handshouse Studios leads a group of students and carpenters to reconstruct one of the wooden trusses that once supported the roof of Notre Dame de Paris.
July 2021 in Washington D.C. Handshouse Studios reconstructed Truss #6, one of the oldest trusses that once stood above the choir of Notre-Dame de Paris. The truss reconstruction was made using the official drawings created by the French lead architects Rémi Fromont and Cédric Trentesaux. They followed French protocol passed down from the Middle Ages for timber harvesting, fabricating, assembly, tools, and raising techniques.
The film follows this diverse group of makers that believe that collaboration is intrinsic to the effort to revive this iconic edifice and acknowledge the impact the loss of cultural heritage has on people around the world. It is a statement of solidarity with fellow traditional craftspeople and an act of goodwill among neighbors.
“It’s more than recovering and object. It’s recovering a world”
About
Rian Brown, is an award-winning independent filmmaker and professor of Cinema at Oberlin College. Brown-Orso’s work spans a variety of genres, including experimental, animation, documentary, and video installation. Her work focuses on women’s issues, social justice, and experimenting with new forms of animation and time-based art. She was awarded grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation’s Just Films initiative for the production of The Foreigner’s Home, a full-length documentary about Toni Morrison at the Louvre. Her works have screened internationally at film festivals and museums including Rotterdam International Film Festival, British Film Institute, National Gallery of Art, BAM, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, L.A Hammer, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Harvard Film Archive, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Anchorage Museum of Art, MOCA Cleveland, Santa Fe International Film Festival, Miami Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and others. Brown-Orso grew up in Boston and received an MFA in film from the University of California, San Diego. She is the co-founder of Studio Orsopolis, which is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
