Paris, the Luminous Years: The Making of the Modern

FAIN: TS-50037-06

Educational Broadcasting Corporation (New York, NY 10019-7416)
Margaret Smilow (Project Director: November 2005 to July 2007)

Scripting of a two-part, two-hour film series on art and culture in Paris between 1905 and 1930.

PARIS–THE LUMINOUS YEARS is a 2-part, 2-hour series for public TV broadcast in 2008. Its subject is Modernism and the birth of 20th-century culture. Between 1905 and 1930, Paris was the artistic center for the Western world, the locus of what was innovative in the arts, when the avant-garde overthrew centuries of academic tradition in nearly every artistic discipline. Modernism and 20th-century art and culture were born in Paris, but their lineage was international. To the artists who lived and worked there during these luminous years, Paris as Place was all-important. The significance of place is the organizing theme of this documentary that asks, Why Paris?