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Poster for I Build the Tower
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Released
2006 · FILM

I Build the Tower

Runtime
124 min
Documentary

Synopsis

"I Build the Tower" is the true story of the life and work of Sam Rodia, the Italian immigrant who built the world-famous Watts Towers on a residential lot in South Central Los Angeles. These mosaic-covered spires of reinforced cement rising to almost one hundred feet were once scheduled for demolition by the City Building Department. The towers survived to become a symbol of the community in which they stand and they are now recognized throughout the world as a unique embodiment of the structural principles found in nature.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 8

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Edward LandlerShot by Ben Caldwell

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