World Art Events
Bringing world-first filmed exhibitions and events from around the world to Australian screens. Discover celebrated and influential international artists as you've never seen them before.
PICASSO: A Rebel In Paris.
“Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation: it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us”. Pablo Picasso
Early one morning in the year 1901, Picasso arrived in Paris.
And that’s the day his future began, in that city. Picasso was born in Spain in 1881 and would spend almost his entire life in Paris and yet, in the French capital, he would often feel like a stranger, an exile, under ‘special police surveillance’. PICASSO. A REBEL IN PARIS. Story of a life and a museum starts here.
It tells the story of Pablo Picasso and takes an unprecedented, completely different look compared to the one we are used to. Made for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Picasso (Malaga, 25 October 1881 - Mougins, 8 April 1973), - directed by Simona Risi and based on a subject by Didi Gnocchi and Sabina Fedeli, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Arianna Marelli - this docufilm focuses on the story of a young immigrant, poor but destined to become one of the most important icons of the 20th century. The film moves continuously in and out of the Musée Picasso in Paris, that has the largest existing collection dedicated to the painter with 6,000 masterpieces and 200,000 pieces of archive material, and follows Picasso through the Parisian neighborhoods where he lived, from the early days in ateliers with no heating to the large middle-class apartments where his success began: a physical and intellectual journey to gain a deeper understanding of his work and spirit. Guiding us on this journey is Mina Kavani, the Iranian actress who starred in No Bears by Jafar Panahi, a dissident director who won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2022. Kavani arrived in Paris a few years ago, driven by the need to act without the censorship imposed by the ayatollahs' regime. A difficult choice made in the name of freedom, that now prevents her from being able to return to her country. Like Picasso, who could not and did not want to return to Spain during Francoism, she now lives the painful existence of an expatriate.
PICASSO. A REBEL IN PARIS. Story of a Life and a Museum creates and develops an original portrait of the artist, outlining the contradictory nature of his character - at the same time generous and despotic, made of sunshine and shadow, often hidden behind a mask - and the duplicity of his behavior, even with the many women in his life. The dual nature of his character has sparked off a thorny debate: can you separate the artist from the man? Ever present in the background is the Paris of Picasso's day and age, it was also a city full of contradictions, which at the turn of the century, just as it was becoming an open, modern metropolis, it showed intolerance and xenophobia towards immigrants. And Picasso was an immigrant, an anarchist among anarchists in Montmartre, the suspicious type, someone to be wary of. Little-known aspects of the painter will emerge, revealing a side of him that historians and art historians are only now beginning to investigate, such as him being ‘an alien' in Paris. There will be no shortage of analyses of works such as Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon and we will even discover why it is possible to effortlessly cast a 'queer' gaze on the artist's work. Mina Kavani will accompany us with readings of excerpts from the letters kept at the Picasso Museum and from books such as 'Picasso and His Friends' by Fernande Olivier, 'Picasso' by Gertrude Stein and 'My Life with Picasso' by Françoise Gilot. Completing the film are interviews with art critics, curators, intellectuals and artists who will help us gain access to Picasso's mind and understand why he is considered to be one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century. Among them will be Cécile Debray the President of the Musée National Picasso in Paris, Annie Cohen-Solal the author of the book “Un étranger nommé Picasso” (Picasso The Foreigner), as well as art historians Marie-Laure Bernadac and Eugenio Carmona Mato, stylist and designer Paul Smith, Head of the Picasso Studies Centre, Paris Cécile Godefroy, French historian François Hartog, artists Obiageli Okigbo and Guillermo Kuitca.
