Impossible Light Redesigning the San Francisco Bay Bridge

On March 5th, 2013, San Francisco's skyline was transformed by an amazing sight: 25,000 LED lights that, for perhaps the first time save the 1989 earthquake, caused people to consider the Bay Bridge instead of her iconic sister. How did this happen? Who was behind the eight million-dollar installation? How in the world did they pull it off? The story behind the making of THE BAY LIGHTS--a project whose very "impossibility made it possible"--answers these questions, revealing the drama and the daring of artist Leo Villareal and a small team of visionaries who battle seemingly impossible challenges to turn a dream of creating the world's largest LED light sculpture into a glimmering reality.
Running Time
70 mins
Year
2014
Kanopy ID
1322108
Filmmakers
Languages
Subjects
Show More
Related videos
Scraphouse: San Francisco
ScrapHouse was a temporary demonstration home, built entirely of salvaged material on Civic Center Plaza adjacent to San Francisco City Hall. Over the course of just six weeks, a team of volunteers scoured Bay Area dumps and scrap yards. A group of architects, landscape architects, lighting specialists, and metal fabricators…
Artists In Exile - A story of Modern Dance in San Francisco
Artists In Exile: A story of Modern Dance in San Francisco chronicles over forty years of dancemaking in the San Francisco Bay Area. The film begins with dance revolutionary Anna Halprin and highlights seminal Bay Area choreographers including Mangrove, Tumbleweed, ODC/San Francisco, Margaret Jenkins, Dance Brigade, Joe Goode and Contraband.…
Forever, Chinatown - An Artist Recreates His Childhood Chinatown in a Rapidly Changing San Francisco
A documentary about unknown, self-taught 81-year-old artist Frank Wong who has spent the past four decades recreating his fading memories by building romantic, extraordinarily detailed miniature models of the San Francisco Chinatown rooms of his youth. This film takes the journey of one individual and maps it to a rapidly…
Thom Mayne - U.S. Federal Office Building, San Francisco
The Pritzker-prize winning architect Thom Mayne has been identified with muscular, bold, steel-and-glass design since the founding of his firm, Morphosis, in 1971. With the Federal Office Building in San Francisco, Mayne proves that innovative and sustainable architecture can be introduced successfully into a building type typically considered predictable and…
From Nothing, Something - Techniques of Creative People
From Nothing, Something profiles creative thinkers across a variety of disciplines to find the common techniques, habits and neuroses that lead to breakthrough ideas. This is an inspiring, intimate, often funny look at the creative process -- straight from the brains of some of culture's most unique and accomplished talents.…
San Francisco’s Wild History Groove - Underground Artists and Poets from the California Beat Era
Rebels from the 50s, avant-garde California artists and poets turned their backs on pursuit of money and embraced a new expression of freedom. How it was to "swing" in the underground--in the shadows of American culture.
In the Monument - Tracing the Evolution of Holocaust Memorialization
World renowned architect Daniel Libeskind (Jewish Museums in Berlin, Copenhagen, San Francisco), prolific scholar James E. Young (The Texture of Memory, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust), museum designer Ralph Appelbaum (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Canadian Museum for Human Rights), visual artist Esther Shalev-Gerz (Hamburg-Harburg Monument Against Fascism) and many other…
The Gates
Co-directed by Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles, The Gates chronicles the evolution of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation from concept to installation, ultimately overcoming public disapproval and transforming Central Park into a visual symphony of color, light, joy and beauty.
Proteus - An Animated Documentary About Biologist and Artist Ernst Haeckel
For the 19th century, the world beneath the sea played much the same role that outer space played for the 20th. The ocean depths were both the ultimate scientific frontier and the home of imagination and the fantastic.
Twenty years in the making and based on images of 19th century…
Spark: A Burning Man Story - Organizing the Burning Man Festival
Each year, 60,000 people from around the globe gather in the Nevada desert for the week-long Burning Man festival, where they party and collaborate on large-scale art before burning a giant effigy in a ritual frenzy. Rooted in self-expression, self-reliance and community effort, Burning Man has grown famous for stirring…
Edible City - Local Food Systems
This film introduces a diverse cast of extraordinary characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system. It is a fun, fast-paced journey through the local Good Food Movement that's taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation, and around the world. Introducing a diverse…
Harry Seidler: Modernist - An Exhilirating Retrospective of Seidler's Architectural Vision
The first documentary retrospective of Harry Seidler's architectural legacy, Harry Seidler: Modernist reveals an intimate portrait of his extraordinary life and internationally recognised work. Seidler is acclaimed as one of the greatest modernist architects. He won every architectural major prize in Australia, is represented in every major city, and was…
Comments (1)
So inspiring! I feel fortunate to be able to view Leo Villareal’s beautiful artwork on the Bay Bridge. This documentary will make you appreciate the tremendous amount of dedication, craftsmanship, and artistry that made this historic piece possible today.