This exhibition will display the artistic richness and originality of the magic lantern and the evolution and variety of the iconography projected by the lantern since its origins (1659) until its gradual disappearance in the 1920s.

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The Magic Lantern and Painted Film: 400 Years of Cinema

The cycle examines the character of the father in film, sometimes a role-model and a protector, sometimes a violent, quiet, absent, or destructive person. With the ongoing radical transformations of the traditional image of the family, fatherhood is undergoing serious changes, inseparable from the redefinition of manhood.

Featured Works:

Various themes: the patriarch, the evil father, how to become a father.

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Cycle: Fatherhood

Discover the legendary universe of the studios and the film sets when movie production was still the work of artisans. Paris, Berlin, and Hollywood were the three major capitals for cinema and it wasn't unusual to have filmmakers travel from one country to the other to shoot, or even to emigrate. Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Siodmak, and more made that choice, sometimes stopping in Paris before going to Hollywood. From silent films to the talkies, these photographs show us the magic of filmmaking in process and what happens behind the screen. The technology evolved but the mystery of the film sets remained intact.

Featured Works:

69 films and 200 photographs  

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On the Film Sets: Paris-Berlin-Hollywood, 1910-1939

Takeshi Kitano started as a stand-up comedian, became a politically incorrect TV personality, a film and a TV actor. He is also an intuitive and genius filmmaker who directed sober gangster films (Sonatine, Hana-bi), an adolescent romance (A Scene At the Sea), a comedy obsessed with sex (Getting Any?), a melodramatic tale (Dolls), a sword film (Zatôichi), self-mocking comedies (Kikujirô no natsu, Takeshis'). He is also a painter, novelist, editor, and singer. His double signature, "Beat Takeshi" for TV and comedy and "Takeshi Kitano" for film and serious creation, is not enough to organize his multiple identities. He is the only artist who pushes the limits of experimenting contraries so far and who puts so relentlessly his creation, his image, and his sanity on the line.

Featured Works:

Along with the exhibition "Beat Takeshi Kitano, Gosse de peintre" that the artist conceived for the Fondation Cartier, the Centre Pompidou will screen 40 feature films, films made for TV, and documents: the most complete retrospective to date on Kitano as a director and actor, in his presence.

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Takeshi Kitano, the iconoclast

Of course, he's not Jean Renoir, but even Jean Renoir isn't always Jean Renoir, whereas Julien Duvivier is always Julien Duvivier: a director true to himself, and never the same. He directed only films that didn't reflect each other, so that they didn't reflect him. He was criticized for what was considered a weakness: he stayed away from style in order to explore all of the genres. Diversity was his only rule.

Featured Works:

60 films        

Program information:

Julien Duvivier