© photographs by Bruno Avei l lan

LES BONS CLIENTS & ARTE FRANCE

present

A film by Bruno Aveillan

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THE PITCH

RODIN D IV INO # INFERNO

a 60-min documentary film directed by Bruno Aveillanwritten with Stephen Levy-Kuentz & Zoé Balthusproduced by Les Bons Clients

an ambitious and singular project, for delivery in January 2017 on the occasion of Auguste Rodin’s death centenary

The portrait of one artist by another. World-renowned visual artist, photographer and director Bruno Aveillan, known for his commercial work for some of the world’s foremost international brands, turns his camera to the creative process of sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Divino # Inferno is the story of one of the art world’s great masterpieces, a legendary sculpture that holds the key to the very personal genius of its creator, the immense Auguste Rodin, who moved endlessly back and forth between Heaven and Hell.

The piece is called The Gates of Hell.

No sculptor since Michelangelo had achieved anything of such astounding beauty. Shrouded in a veil of smoky mystery, The Gates of Hell was Rodin’s pet project for more than thirty years, although he never lived to see it completed. Simultaneously, a manifesto and a laboratory for all his masterpieces, it’s held onto its air of mystery over the years. All of the artist’s inspirations and techniques are expressed within it — encompassing the entire spectrum of the human condition, his own personal life, and all the women he ever loved.

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DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Beyond the film’s form, the viewer will be fascinated by this journey into the sculptor’s mind, by understanding how Rodin’s genius developed, his methods and experimentation, his successes and failures. By the end, the audience will understand that, without passion, self-examination and tireless work, talent is nothing.

Using never-before-seen footage pieced together from archival photos, the film is, at once, an immersive experience and a cinematic inscape. It offers seamless and enduring bridges to other forms of expression, such as contemporary art and dance, photography, painting and digital imagery.

Rodin Divino # Inferno will crack open the Gates of Hell, which are supposed to remain forever shut, just long enough for the public to see and understand the master’s Divine Comedy.

The film is an ode to sculpture’s materials – whether clay modeling, marble carving or bronze forging. These are ubiquitous, for they recall the physical and sensual investment that sculpture entails.

The film develops a quasi organic approach in the attention it gives to the sculptor’s body language and to the movement of bodies in Rodin’s work. It will literally come to life through live flesh-and-blood performances by some of the greatest performers on the contemporary dance scene.

The experimental nature of how The Gates of Hell was conceived and evolved is rife with narrative elements that make for a passionate, moving and suspenseful film. The tone will be cinematic. The style and pacing, fresh and inventive. This film will steer clear of stuffy, academic documentary devices, instead aiming for a spirit that is unapologetically contemporary. What a perfect fit for an artist whose work and personality were constantly at odds with conventional academicism and who laid the foundations for Modern Art!

This film’s stated goal is to captivate audiences through strong, edgy storytelling, the body language of dance, and the sensual dramatization of Rodin’s works through the magic of light and cinematography.

I’m fascinated by the duality of this great master. In Rodin, creative genius and destructiveness coexisted. His almost divine inspiration was locked in a constant struggle with a destructive alter ego who shattered, split, cut, and tore up what he had made, only to reassemble it, glue it back together, reseal it, reunite it, and turn it into something else. His single-mindedness was held against him till the end of his life. To get a better understanding of the man and his creation, it is this creative process that I’ll explore.

The Gates of Hell will be the narrative backbone for this film.

The film will bring together my own perspective as a classically trained visual artist with the finely crafted and sensual narration of writer and art critic Zoé Balthus, and the expert storytelling of screenwriter Levy-Kuentz to reveal the secrets of the sculptor’s entire body of work and paint a very personal portrait of an extraordinary artist and a remarkable man.

Rodin Divino # Inferno has been conceived as an all-encompassing journey into the heart of this extremely sensual work, and ultimately into the mind and creative process of its creator.

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B RU N O AV E I L L A N L E S B O N S C L I E N T S

Bruno Aveillan is a contemporary visual artist whose creative work pervades into different domains of visual expression. Having initially studied painting, his ability to blend this artistry with the most sophisticated visual effects has made Bruno’s work memorable to viewers worldwide.

With many award-winning international campaigns to his credit, he is one of the most distinguished sought after directors and photographers across the globe in the art communication industry.

Bruno’s first major recognition came in 1998 with an award-winning spot for Perrier, in which he brought a fresh, fantastical approach to a traditional brand. By 2001, he was directing alongside Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar-Wai and Oliver Stone on the high-profile Orange spots for audiences overseas. He directed the first ever film for Louis Vuitton “Journey’s”, a 90-second spot asking viewers “Where will life take you?”, which has won more than 14 prestigious international awards. More recently, Swarovski enlisted Aveillan to create an experimental cinema short movie for their international art exhibitions.

In 2009, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre in Paris had a retrospective of his work within their major exhibition devoted to cinema and advertising. Other international museums, such as the MoMA in New York, had special screenings of his films.

Simultaneously, Bruno Aveillan has developed a personal artistic path that includes photography, experimental films and installations. The major reoccurring themes throughout his work centres around the human body, effacement, wanderings and memories. His experimental films and photographs, regularly published and exhibited, are part of prestigious public and private collections around the world.

Bruno Aveillan is set to make his feature directorial debut on “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 2” for Paramount Pictures studio in the US.

Les Bons Clients is an independent documentary film production company, which has just celebrated its 10 years! Eclectic, our catalogue counts some 70 documentaries commissioned by Arte, France Télévisions and Canal+, including social issues, investigation, History and culture documentaries. Our ambition is to be a unique place for creativity where writers and directors can develop original and popular programs. We pay particular attention to storytelling and visual style, and our emphasis is on ambitious projects with a strong international profile.

Les Bons Clients is the producer of many acclaimed documentary films, including several Arts & Culture documentaries such as Mona Lisa’s diary, the prestigious collection Forgotten Treasures of the Mediterranean region, for Arte, under the high patronage of Unesco, as well as pop culture docs, but also many international co-productions, such as the investigation on global surveillance An Eye on You: Citizens Under Surveillance and the memorial documentary Maestros of the camps, a gripping quest of the music written in the camps of WWII, both films by Alexandre Valenti, in coproduction with Intuition Films and in partnership with several international broadcasters, film funds and funding bodies.

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| 8 Rodin’s works have largely spread outside of his homeland to enter into a realm of collective belonging. The very widespread territories where Rodin’s museums or collections exist – including Japan, Korea, UK and most European countries as well as the US - reflect the international appeal of the project.

Arte is committed to making the documentary one of their programming highlights of 2017 for Rodin’s death centenary and RMN-Grand Palais is programming the film as a launch pad of the national Rodin Exhibition taking place at Grand Palais Museum in Paris in March 2017. This will notably ensure the film receives excellent international exposure. Our objective is to go beyond art lovers and reach out to the general public. The unique aesthetic universe of Bruno Aveillan will create an attractive and timeless work accessible and relevant to a wider and younger audience than most art documentaries.

We are producing Rodin divino # inferno on the occasion of Auguste Rodin’s death centenary in 2017, in coproduction with the European broadcaster ARTE and RMN – GP (the public cultural institution for French national museums, under supervision of French Ministry of Culture) and with the support of CNC, French National Centre for Cinema.

Bruno Aveillan will be working with his creative partners of QUAD Group who will also be coproduction partners, bringing their strong reputation and distinctive visual expertise in digital imagery and special effects.

The production of the film is well underway, with a significant amount of funding on board from French and European funders. The early selection at two prestigious pitching sessions – Sheffield Doc/Fest Meetmarket in the UK and EBU/European Broadcasting Union – is allowing us to gather further interest from a wide variety of international broadcasters and foundations.

Rodin divino # inferno is the most ambitious, creative and singular project we have ever produced. We are especially excited to be using today’s contemporary artistic techniques to celebrate such a unique artist in the history of modern art.

PA RT N E R S & I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O T E N T I A L

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| 10 Producers Les Bons Clients

THIBAUT CAMURAT - LOIC BOUCHET26, rue de Gramont 75002 Paris+ 33 1 42 96 19 44tcamurat@lesbonsclients.frlbouchet@lesbonsclients.fr

Fundraising Consultant

MARTINE MICHON+ 33 6 63 13 14 78martine.michon@neuf.fr

E B U

RODIN D IV INO # INFERNO

Length : 60 min

Authors: Bruno Aveillan, Zoé Balthus, Stephan Levy-Kuentz

Director: Bruno Aveillan

Total budget: 857.000 €

Total budget in place: 530.000 €

Producer: LES BONS CLIENTS, Thibaut Camurat, Loïc Bouchet

In coproduction with: ARTE France, QUAD

Commissioned by: ARTE France, Arts & Culture unit, Nathalie Verdier

Broadcast date: March 2017

One-min teaser available with this link: https://vimeo.com/163664168 (password : LBCPROD)

P R O D U C T I O N I N F O R M AT I O N

C O N TA C T S

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