Moulin Rouge!
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.
Coco Before Chanel
Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
An Officer and a Spy
In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Devil’s Island penal colony.
Colette, l'insoumise
The incredible life of novelist, screenwriter, actress and nude dancer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), who led her life to the beat, constantly reinventing herself through words, scandals and metamorphoses; a peasant woman who became an icon of the European Belle Époque; an artist who defied religion and social prejudices to live a hedonist existence worthy of her desires; a real woman who turned herself into a fictional character…
Casque d'Or
At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.
The Dancer
A young woman from the American Midwest, Loïe Fuller became the toast of the Folies Bergère at the turn of the 20th century and an icon of the Belle Epoque. Inventor of the breathtaking Serpentine Dance, she was a pioneer of modern dance and lighting techniques. It was her complicated relationship to her protégé - Isadora Duncan – that precipitated the downfall of this early 20th century icon.
Samurai Ballerina -L'étoile de Paris en fleur-
Paris in the early 20th century. Fujiko dreams of becoming a painter despite expectations of marriage, while Chizuru, born into a samurai family, longs to study ballet. Reunited in Paris after meeting as children, they support each other and move toward their dreams.
The King of Laughter
In early 20th-century Naples, a theatrical parody lands beloved thespian and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in court, facing a malicious lawsuit that could compromise his freedom of expression and the economic security of his extended family—including his son's, young Eduardo De Filippo.
Dona Eulália
Paris 1900
In 1900, the eyes of the whole world are on Paris. The World's Fair welcomed 50 million amazed visitors, and the city celebrated itself in a glamorous era. This period went down in history as the "Belle Époque." Elaborately restored and colorized historical photographs bring to life the exciting life in Paris between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of World War I in 1914. Bicycles, cars, airplanes, moving pictures, newly founded film studios, revolutionary composers and painters, avant-garde ballet performances, fashion houses, summer resorts on the Atlantic coast – life was intoxicating. People celebrate in the variety shows, cabarets, and revue theaters of Paris. Moulin Rouge, Folies Bergères, Bal Tabarin—in Paris, the nights are long and life is too short to sleep through. It is a dance on the volcano, given the political developments in the world.
Hotel Paradiso
Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block and he needs a new play, so he takes an opportunity to observe his upper class neighbors of 1900 Paris. There is Monsieur Boniface with hard domineering wife Angelique; also, Monsieur Cotte with beautiful but neglected wife Marcelle. Henri Cotte traces architectural anomalies (mostly "ghost" sounds in the drain pipes) and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso, which happens to be the chosen romantic rendezvous spot of Marcelle and Monsieur Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this is under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.
Dilili in Paris
With the help of her delivery-boy friend, Dilili, a young Kanak, investigates a spate of mysterious kidnappings of young girls that is plaguing Belle Epoque Paris. In the course of her investigation she encounters a series of extraordinary characters, each of whom provides her with clues that will help her in her quest.
La Belle Epoque
Featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Diana Vreeland, La Belle Epoque evokes "the beautiful era" of 1890-1914, a time in which the wealthy upper classes of the Western world gave themselves over to a life of elegance and taste-making, their eyes closed to the increasing social and political turmoil fermenting beneath the surface of polite society. The program uses period motion pictures, photographs, and sound recordings, as well as the arts and fashions of the period to supplement the spoken memories of the participating interviewees who actually lived... La Belle Epoque.
Les Trésors du Paris de la Belle Époque
The Bachelor
In pre-WWI Austria-Hungary, a physician struggles with his decision about which woman will he marry.
Paris Was a Woman
Women (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind.
Paris in the Belle Epoque
The Bokelberg photographic collection brings to life the Paris of the Belle Époque (1871-1914), an exhibition of workshops and stores with extremely beautiful shop windows before which the owners and their employees proudly pose, hiding behind their eyes the secret history of a great era.