ARTE Distribution

Rosa Bonheur, the animal painter adulated in France in the XIXth century, often forgotten in her country, is nevertheless a major figure of women's emancipation and of the animal cause.

Rosa Bonheur was a major figure of female emancipation: she was the first woman artist to receive the Legion of Honour, from the hands of another woman, the Empress Eugenie, who said on this occasion: “Genius has no sex”. She was also the first woman officially authorized to wear pants; the first to buy property with the fruit of her labor, thanks to the sale of a single painting; she settled in this property with several friends: living between women, sharing their fortunes between them, becoming heirs of each other, they founded a sisterhood that would leave a lasting impression on the French society of the time.

Official selection - 24th Luchon Television Creation Festival

1937 was the last summer before war. Picasso, Man Ray and friends, passionate artists and poets, gathered in the South of France. This is the journey of the end of a great artistic era.

Discover the summer of 1937, in Mougins. This film recounts the end of a great artistic era over one particular summer. Photography, painting, poetry, and cinema were all mixed in the carefree spirit and friendship... But very quickly the war arrived, and everything changed, the world was upended and so was art; the film tells of this epiphany, this ephemeral moment that probably only existed precisely because everyone felt the end of this era was coming.

 At the end of the 19th century, painters were engaged in an aesthetic revolution under the threat of the emergence of photography. Dive deep into the Industrial Revolution, when art and cinema invented each other.

Monet and his peers were passionate about modern, fast and photogenic life; they paved the way for the invention of cinema. This in turn revolutionized the lives of painters and their art.

Discover the renaissance of the Morozov collection and the fate of the great patrons of this “silver age”, an exceptional period in the history of the arts in Russia.

This film traces the history of one of the most prestigious collections of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, acquired by two Russian industrialists before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, then nationalized by Lenin, before being divided between museums in Moscow and Leningrad, and then disappearing for 50 years. 

Modigliani’s work is among the most recognizable in modern art, but we know almost nothing about the man himself. Based on an ongoing scientific study, the film reveals the secrets behind the myths surrounding this Bohemian artist, to coincide with the centenary of his death in 1920.

Born in 1884, Amedeo Modigliani left no legacy of correspondence or theoretical writings. The public interest in his work seems to be inversely proportional to the attention paid to his life by art historians. Today, some of his paintings achieve astronomical prices at auction (the 1917 work “Reclining Nude” sold in 2015 at Christie’s for more than 170 million dollars). In parallel, Modigliani is attracting fresh attention, and a handful of historians, art critics, and curators are keen to understand the man behind the legend.
This film sets out to retrace his life, exploring key locations and relationships, and his influences. It will also draw on unprecedented scientific research studying 26 paintings and three sculptures by Modigliani held in French public collections.

In each episode, an artist creates his own documentary on someone he or she admires, or talks about art or something completely different.

The artist is in the driving seat!

This documentary series tells the story of intimate and tumultuous love stories in the context of art history. With Amedao Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne, Lee Miller and Man Ray or Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.

Love story is an excuse to narrate the lives of artists, their neuroses and narcissism, and to confront them to their alter ego, the other, their double.
Each of the couples of this collection answers the same questions: is love compatible with creation? Can artists reveal themselves through romantic passion? Does love bring a renewed energy to Art?

As part of a Louvre Museum initiative, the worlds' leading experts on Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Watteau, Raphael and Poussin joined forces to rediscover and study the masters' works that were de-hung and de-framed for the occasion.

The masterpieces at the Louvre are real survivors!
Throughout the centuries, they have managed to escape pillaging, fire, woodworm, pigment degradation, changing tastes, overpaints, heavy-handed restorations, mutilation by saw, attacks, ageing and oblivion. Some works have lived a clandestine life, under false identity, others, believed to be lost, have suddenly reappeared centuries later.

An exceptional event, even for experts. In these collective investigations, each participant tries to shed light on the enigmas surrounding the works. A unique encounter between man and works of art.

Dive into an iconic work of the Spanish architect Gaudí, Casa Batlló. This fantastic and magical building is less known than the Sagrada Família, but much more iconic in his work, since he managed to invite nature into the city...

Nowadays, the city of Barcelona cannot be dissociated from Gaudí, an artist who has always been inspired by Mediterranean culture – which shows in all his work. The Casa Batlló and its plant world in the heart of the city – design, color, shape, space and light – is the ideal combination of art and functionality, of architecture and design; it is a key building for understanding Catalan modernism... and for understanding the Gaudí myth!

He is a major figure in the pop art movement; one of the most popular and influential artists of his generation. The motifs and colors of his canvasses have been widely reproduced, and are now part of the 20th century art pantheon, changing the way we view the world.

Hockney is typically seen as an artist who loves life, a good time, glamour and sex. The highly personal and emotional side of his work is often overlooked, much like the intensity and individuality he has shown in each of his successive periods and styles.
Through images, anecdotes, and detailed pictorial analysis, this documentary highlights how the renowned painter defies classification and remains mysterious in many ways: an intense, profound, and infinitely passionate artist.

It’s the biggest battle over an art museum in the history of the United States, if not the world: is Detroit about to sell its priceless collection of art to save the city from bankruptcy?

The Detroit Institute of Arts is home to one of the country’s finest collections, including masterpieces by Van Gogh, Titian, Van Eyck and Bruegel. But in 2013, the once so prosperous city was declared bankrupt. With administrators threatening to pull the plug on pension payments and health cover for thousands of municipal employees, Detroit could sell the artworks in its museum to raise funds…
This documentary retraces the story of this battle and explores the universal role of art in people’s lives along the way.

Between narrative compression and visual expansion, this one-hour film skillfully pieces together the career spanning five decades of an unclassifiable artist who left his stamp on the art world.

With his compressions, his sculptures in wrought iron, his giant digits and his expansions, César blew apart the bedrock of classical sculpture and laid the foundations of a modern and spectacular kind of art that is firmly anchored in its time.
A brilliant and radical craftsman, adored by the media and snubbed by his peers, the creator of France’s annual film awards’ trophy – that bears his name – even stated that the artist’s hand was no longer necessary to create works of art.
To mark the 20th anniversary of César’s death and the retrospective of his work held by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a look back on his life and work.