8 masters of Western painting revisited by the director of "Eros + Massacre"!

Starting in 1973, Kijû Yoshida produced “Beauty of Beauty”, an undertaking of an unrivaled scale in the history of cinema on artistic forms, as scrupulously documented as it was open to the imagination. Selected from the 94 chapters that make up this work-sum, the 20 episodes offered here are devoted to the masters of Western painting. Confronting the works with their geographical and intellectual environment, the filmmaker makes heard again, in the hollow of the landscapes, in the blanks of the painting, the rumor of bygone eras.

“All the time I devoted to Beauty of Beauty, I tried to remain silent. In front of me and the camera, the works of art were already standing there. So it was not I who looked at them, but they who observed me. This is why, discarding any information about them as much as possible, I tried to record the gaze they thus turned towards me. I also refrained from using the adjectives "beautiful" or "beautiful". Because what is "beautiful" is so only insofar as the spectator of Beauté de la beauté feels it as such: only his imagination could find any "beauty" there. Kiju Yoshida.

BEAUTY OF BEAUTY
(1974-1977 – Colors – 480 mins)

SUPPLEMENTS *

DVD 1: FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE BAROQUE AGE

. BOSCH, THE PAINTER OF THE FANTASTIC (3 x 24 mn)
. BRUEGEL: WHEN THE PAINTER IS WITNESS TO THE RUIN OF HIS COUNTRY (2 x 24 mn)
. THE CRIMES OF THE PAINTER CARAVAGGIO (2 x 24 mn)

EXTRA COST
. PREFACE BY MATHIEU CAPEL (10 mins)

DVD 2: ROMANTIC EUROPE

. GOYA, THE MAGICIAN OF SPAIN (3 x 24 mn)
. DELACROIX OR THE PARADOX OF ROMANTICISM (2 x 24 mn)

DVD 3: IMPRESSIONISM AND BEYOND

. THE SACRED SCANDAL: THE PAINTER MANET (2 x 24 mn)
. CÉZANNE, THE LOOK OF A SOLITAIRE (2 x 24 mn)
. VAN GOGH (4 x 24 mins)

Released February 6, 2013