In Person: Clara Kraft Isono on Bawa’s Garden

What does it mean to investigate a dream? An unnamed flaneuse traverses the fine line between an unrealised utopia and architectural history in Bawa’s Garden (2022) by Clara Kraft Isono. Situating the built works by renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa at its centre, the film dramatises the protagonist’s search for Lunuganga, the “lost” garden designed by Bawa. Throughout her journey, the film overlaps the experience of living or walking through Bawa’s works with interviews of some of his friends, including prominent artists, designers and collaborators, such as the sculptor Laki Senanayake and photographer Dominic Sansoni. 

Bawa’s Garden adopts a form of autobiography through a dramatised recreation of the process of research and shooting the interviews in the film, alongside the actual interviews that Isono did. These aspects blend together to present Bawa’s own philosophy when creating his works, which emphasised a harmony between nature and built space. This theme is idealised in the narrative of the experimental documentary as it visualises the search for Lunuganga. The film also reflects on the larger legacies of architectural photography, especially in relation to built structures—a sentiment shared by the filmmaker when discussing the vulnerability of architecture, which is assumed to last forever but oftentimes exists only as a visual document. In this edited conversation, Isono discusses her initial exposure to Bawa’s work while she was a student of architecture, the film’s experimental approach to the documentary form, and how the sound design and score contributed to the dream-like experience of static landscape and architecture.

Clara Kraft Isono is a filmmaker based in London. She studied at the London Film School, where she was awarded the prestigious Skill Set Bursary. As a student, she won a UK National Student Film Award. Her film, Achele (2012), was nominated for Best UK Short at the Raindance Film Festival. Bawa’s Garden is her first feature film.

(Featured image: Still from Bawa’s Garden [2022] by Clara Kraft Isono. Image courtesy of the director and the Dharamshala International Film Festival.)

Recorded on 7 November 2023.

To read more about Bawa’s Garden (2022) by Clara Kraft Isono, read Annalisa Mansukhani's essay on the poetic language in the film.