A new documentary about British-Swiss artist Bryan Cyril Thurston makes a nuanced case for the power of art as a form of environmentalist activism. “The private is always political, and the political is always private,” an old truism declares. “All art is political,” notes another. Greina, the new documentary by Swiss architect and filmmaker Patrick Thurston, charts both the utopian potential and the at times sobering repercussions of these principles. The film takes its name from the Greina mountain pass in the Lepontine Alps, which straddles the border of the Swiss cantons of Graubünden and Ticino. It reflects Thurston’s attempt at grappling with the artistic and personal legacy of his 91-year-old father, English-born painter, engraver, and architect Bryan Cyril Thurston. A prolific visual artist who has lived in Switzerland since 1955 – and whose oeuvre, containing some 5,000 pieces, is archived in the Swiss National Library – Bryan Cyril Thurston is today perhaps best ...
