 Paris
the Luminous Years
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DVD HERE
What
an interesting documentary. Which is appropriate actually, as
its subject matter speaks of some of the world’s most important
art-changers ever to skip through a café entrance.
Paris
the Luminous Years is like no other Paris doc you’ve
seen to date. The piece shows you how painters and poets lived
in poverty to become muses in a star-touched few years that were
ripe for new slants on the arts. The luminous years - as they
are called now - were like the city held a color-wheel of talent
and dipped in and out of various hues to create a movement.
The
cafes were places the poor and cold could sit for hours and free
speech was alive and well. Naturally, the ‘stranger’
of the art community felt at ease, and inspired by the city’s
freedoms.
Women
were equals. They had just as much a right to frolic and write,
and run book stores – and publish writers they felt deserved
a voice…even if the book (here the big example is Ulysses)
was considered outrageously scandalous for the times.
But
let’s not forget Jazz. African art had been influencing
the bubbling Parisian arts community to re-think portraits and
landscapes. And, thanks to a lack of hostile racism, the Afro-American
jazz players flourished and found an accepting home in Paris.
In turn the tunes influenced the painters and poets.
The
film focuses on Paris from 1905 to 1930. The city was aglow. Its
streets, then cheap to live upon, became a living diorama for
how the modern world would like to think of itself – and
for how it could be in an ideal state: People expressing thoughts
as art, music, words, and lifestyles without a gaggle of judgment
following behind with pitchforks. The results are Picasso, Joyce,
Chagall, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Copland, Beach and many more.
Their
work now considered masterpieces, their precocious belief in artistical
free speech a game changer that catapulted the art movement across
the globe. This is a look at the birth of Modernism and how it
came to thrust itself abroad in a short time of awe-inspiring
camaraderie.
Snack
Recommendation: A fine brie (room temp please)
and crusty baguette natch, with a long-stemmed glass of Châteauneuf
BUY
DVD HERE
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