Icarus Films announced two new DVD product offerings this past week that will be streeting during the month of July.
The first of these new-to-DVD releases arrives on July 12 and it is the two-film collection titled Summers with Picasso. Included in this collection is documentary filmmaker François Lévy-Kuentz’s latest, On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso, which has been meticulously assembled from material filmed (home movies) and photographs done by American artist Man Ray (aka: Emmanuel Radnitzky) during the summer of 1937 in the south of France with his hosts, Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar (aka: Henriette Theodora Markovitch), who was the model for a number of Picasso’s works … and Picasso’s lover during this point of time.
Also at this “retreat” were the likes of poet Paul Éluard and wife, surrealist and author Roland Penrose, his lover and future wife, Lee Miller (who, as a World War II war correspondent, photograph both Buchenwald and Dachau) and Man Ray’s lover, Adrienne Fidelin, who was often the subject of Man Ray’s photography sessions (and, of note, the mystery subject of Picasso’s 1937 work titled “Femme Assise sur Fond Jaune et Rose,” which literally translates to “Woman Sitting on a Yellow and Pink Background”).
It is a moment captured in time … famous artists, writers and poets gathered to celebrate a summer vacation. War would soon send them off in many different directions.
Teamed with Lévy-Kuentz’s documentary is documentary filmmaker Christian Tran’s Picasso and Sima, Antibes 1946, which documents the time that Michel Sima (aka: Michał Smajewski) photographed Picassco at the Grimaldi studio in Antibes during June of 1946 during the creation of his works, “La Joie de Vivre”and “Le Triptyque.”
From the pre-war summer to the post war … we follow Picassco in these two unique films. Presented in French with English subtitles, the Summers with Picasso DVD release also includes the short film titled Guernica.
Icarus Films will be teaming with France’s premiere film studio, Distrib Films, two weeks later — July 26 — for the domestic DVD debut of Tunisian filmmaker Leyla Bouzid’s A Tale of Love and Desire.
This film festival award-winner had its premiere as the closing night attraction at last summer’s Cannes International Critics' Week, opened theatrically in France six weeks later and then did a world-hopping festival tour with domestic stops at the Philadelphia International Film Festival (October of 2021), Miami Film Festival (last November) and Seattle International Film Festival (April of this year).
In this coming-of-age film, Ahmed (Sami Outalbali — Novembre, Man Up!, Lola) is something of a fish-out-of-water while in his first year at university in Paris. A somber young man, observant and very shy, he quickly spots French-Tunisian student, Farah (Zbeida Belhajamor), who is his opposite … vibrant, out-going and very sensual.
An unlikely romance blooms, but Ahmed’s insecurities and confusion over social mores makes this friendship and potential love affair oh so very complicated!
A Tale of Love and Desire is presented with a mix of French and Spanish with English subtitles.
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