The exhibition “Legends of Paris: A Tale of the 19th Century Art Scene” seems to have captured the interest of buyers even before its official launch at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous market in Le Havre, where it premiered on Tuesday.
Produced by Silex Films and Arte, the four-part series offers an intimate portrait of some of France’s most celebrated artistic and literary figures. Taking viewers into the heart of 19th-century Paris, the series follows the lives of legendary artists such as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Louis-Hector Berlioz, Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire.
The international interest in this period and characters is clear: Arte Distribution has already signed pre-sale deals for “Les Legends de Paris” with TV Unam in Mexico; The Arts Channel in New Zealand; SRF and Hrvatska radioteevizija in Croatia; Radio and Television of Montenegro; LEPL Public Broadcaster in Georgia; and Hellenic Parliament TV in Greece. Arte will broadcast the series in France and Germany.
“Legends of Paris” was directed and co-written by Amélie Harault, who also directed the successful 2015 cartoon series “The Adventurers of Modern Art” for Silks and Artie, which explored the Parisian scene at the turn of the 20th century.
After the international success of the series, Arte was keen to continue the collaboration on another project. For Amélie, “this period was her dream,” says producer Judith Nora of Selex Films, who produced the series alongside Priscilla Bertin. Harault “wishes she had a series like this when she was a teenager to understand poetry, literature and music. So I made the series I dreamed of.”
Courtesy of Arte Distribution
“It was a very difficult period,” Nora adds. “Politically, it’s very complicated – there are three revolutions. So we really tried to make it easy for everyone.”
The series is described as a family show that makes its themes of art and politics accessible to viewers as young as 12. Nora points out that French students start learning about romance at 14, so the series should provide a useful boost. “Even if you’re 10, you won’t understand everything, but you’ll get the flavour. That was our goal.”
The project began development in 2017 and proved to be a huge challenge: “It’s six years of writing; it’s 44 years of art history, 30 characters. You have 2,000 Parisian scenes. [entailed] “We did a huge amount of research, we did a lot of research during this period… 90 people worked for two years in the animation field.”
“Amelie used different techniques for animation. Everything is digital; we used computers and created tools to recreate her drawing style. This is something very new.”
In fact, the team worked with Escape Motions' Rebelle drawing software to create a tool that would allow animators to work faster. They also used TVPaint Animation for the project.
Courtesy of Arte Distribution
Nora added that in terms of the story, Harold chose specific characters from that period and “focused on the friendship and artistic influence between them.”
“We can say that 44 years of art history, all these special people, in animation, using fiction and documentary – this is something that has never been done before,” she points out. “With Adventurers of Modern Art it was a really big step. We’ve done a lot of master classes on the boundaries between fiction and documentary. With this new project, we’re really raising the bar.”
“This represents a real turning point in storytelling,” confirms Josephine Letang, Head of International Distribution and Marketing at Arte Distribution. “We believe in animation, it gives real power to storytelling, expands the audience base, and can especially help introduce younger viewers to history and historical figures.”
