In the spring of 1936, while working on his book about Buenos Aires, Coppola created this short film of the final stages of the construction of the city’s iconic obelisk. Designed by the architect Alberto Prebisch, the obelisk was erected in the Plaza de la República to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the city’s founding. The Birth of the Obelisk (Así Nació el Obelisco) interjects dynamic panning shots into sequences of carefully constructed stills that recall some of Coppola’s earliest photographs.