Henri Matisse

As the title of this French documentary indicates, Ce Siecle a 50 Ans examines the 20th Century at its halfway point. Utilizing the archives of several European film reserves, director Denise Tua offers a fascinating mosaic of the people and events that shaped the years 1900 to 1950. Complementing the vintage film clips are three dramatized sketches, delineating the romantic customs of three different points in time. These sketches are inadequately performed, and can easily be ignored. Ce Siecle a 50 Ans both preserved and provided celluloid material for scores of future documentaries.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Matisse's birth and of the exhibition at the Center Pompidou which will be dedicated to him in 2020, this art documentary brings us back to life of the journeys made by Matisse that influenced his art. And particularly his last trip to Polynesia in 1930 which will bring him to the threshold of contemporary art with the invention of his gouache cut-out papers.

From his childhood in the lowlands of northern France to his death in Nice, a look at the life of painter Matisse: his early education, his apprenticeship at the Beaux-Arts and his decades-long career as a painter, sculptor, and draftsman.

A surviving fragment from Henri Langlois’s unfinished Cinémathèque française project inviting artists, writers, scholars, and filmmakers to create 16mm works outside commercial and censorship constraints. Filmed with Matisse’s cooperation, the short preserves one of the few completed remnants of the ambitious initiative.

Documentary film about artist Henri Matisse