Film director, writer, and producer Mary McGuckian will discuss her recent film, The Price of Desire, about Irish architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray, on Friday, December 11 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. Part of the 2015-16 Fund for Irish Studies series at Princeton University, the event is free and open to the public.

The film, which premiered at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival earlier this year, is set substantially in and around Gray’s most abiding work, the villa E.1027 at Roquebrune Cap Martin in southern France, now recognized by many as the first fully fledged modernist house ever constructed. The drama explores the controversial events and details surrounding Le Corbusier’s effacement, defacement, and eventual erasure of Gray’s authorship and ownership of the one of the most important houses of the 20th century.

Gray is regarded as a cult figure among collectors of her work. This film is part of the Eileen Gray Project (2014-15), which includes a companion documentary, Gray Matters, by Marco Orisini, as well as a series of limited edition Eileen Gray Project Portrait Prints by Julian Lennon, and various other projects designed to bring Gray’s life and work to the public’s attention. Gray is best known for E.1027, the modernist villa she designed on the Cote d’Azur, as well as for her lacquer work and steel and glass furniture. The villa, which is featured in the film, has been designated as a French National Cultural Monument and is currently undergoing restoration.

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