The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller

The result is a balanced and fascinating hour-long exploration of Fuller’s life and work. I couldn’t stop thinking about the intersection between Fuller’s intelligent and straightforward nature, and his role as an “exchanger of ideas.” Anyone familiar or unfamiliar with Fuller will be lucky to experience his life’s work through the enthralling interpretation by Green and Yo La Tengo.

My favorite sequence was the beautiful footage of the Biosphere complex built for the 1967 Expo in Montreal. [Yo La Tengo] started into a song as we approach the dome in a moving camera POV: It’s a tracking shot provided by the Expo’s monorail that goes directly into the sphere. (Try THAT with a jet-pack, futurists!)

With the world premiere of “The Love Song of Buckminster Fuller” at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Sam Green is reviving the legacy of the prophetic engineer and architect who promoted independent design and sustainability when America was clear-cutting forests, paving wetlands and driving the wasteful cars that almost put General Motors out of business.

You might know Fuller as the designer of the geodesic dome or the namesake of buckyball molecules, but Green, in conjunction with a new exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is working to establish his reputation as a precursor to modern progressive-tech culture.