_Revealing the key to Spielberg's genius
_Synopsis
As a precocious and gifted filmmaker, Steven Spielberg has left his mark on movie theaters. Both producer and Hollywood mogul, he has established himself as the world’s biggest provider of blockbusters, one of the main film industry's key players.
However his work is more personal than what it might seem at first sight. The terror he felt throughout all his childhood, is at stake of his first projects. On one side, the fear of the ocean (Jaws), the fear of the desert roads that crisscross America (Duel).
On the other side, the director changes the current paradigm in Hollywood which tends to represent aliens as hostile creatures when in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and in E.T. he has associated them rather with the imaginary friend he would have dreamed of when he was a child. A lonely childhood, marked by the bullying of his classmates, as he was the only Jewish child in the neighborhood.
Spielberg liberated this long-repressed Judaism artistically when, after numerous successes, but also many failures, he made Schindler's List, a real turning point in his filmography.
But his deepest secret, the one that haunts most of his films, Spielberg will wait decades to confront it and stage it, in The Fabelmans, released in 2022...
Thanks to rare archives, extracts from his films, making of, and interviews that the director has given throughout all his impressive career. This documentary draws a portrait of a filmmaker who is as famous as he is discreet, and reveals the key to his genius and to his filmography.
_Technical sheet
Format: TV documentary
Running time: 52'
Status: Completed
Year: 2024
Versions: French, English
Author: Michaël PRAZAN
Director: Michaël PRAZAN
Producers: François LE GALL, Marion GUTH, Sébastien TÉZÉ
Production companies: a_BAHN (LU), Ellis Films (FR)
Worldwide distributor: ARTE Sales (FR)
Broadcasters: ARTE GEIE (FR), RTS (CH), RTBF (BE), Movistar Plus+ (ES), ICI ARTV (CA)
With the support of: Film Fund Luxembourg (LU), CNC (FR)
PRAZAN Michaël
Film director
Michaël Prazan is a renowned writer and director of historical documentaries, including Einsatzgruppen, les commandos de la mort, broadcast in 2009, and Ellis Island. Une histoire du rêve américain, produced by Arte and Les Films d'un Jour in 2014.
He holds a CAPES in literature and teaches literature at various lycées in the Créteil academy, as well as writing articles for the press. After publishing several essays, he obtained a doctorate in stylistics at the Sorbonne. He is interested in the radical movements of the 1960s and murderous ideologies. After writing a book on the bloody epic of the Japanese Red Army (Les fanatiques, Seuil 2002), he made a documentary film for Arte (Japon, les Années rouges) while continuing his activities as a journalist and teacher.
In March 2005, he published his thesis, L'Écriture génocidaire: l'antisémitisme en style et en discours (Calmann-Lévy). In the wake of a documentary and a book devoted to the emblematic and controversial figure of the 1960s and 1970s, Pierre Goldman: Pierre Goldman, le frère de l'ombre (Seuil 2005), L'assassinat de Pierre Goldman (France 3 - Kuiv productions, 2005), he stopped teaching to devote himself to writing and directing. This was followed by essays and films on the 1937 Nanking massacre, Roger Garaudy and Ariel Sharon.
Michaël Prazan published his first novel, La Maîtresse de Charles Baudelaire (Plon, 2007). He wrote and directed Einsatzgruppen, les commandos de la mort, a documentary about the genocide of Eastern Jews by the mobile killing commandos and their auxiliaries during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. This three-hour film, broadcast in two parts on France 2 in April 2009, won the prize for best documentary at the Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw in 2010.
In 2014, Michaël Prazan directed Ellis Island. A History of the American Dream, the documentary, produced by Les Films d'un Jour and Arte, looks back at immigration to the United States from 1892 to 1954, through a fascinating polyphonic narrative that embraces both the short and long stories.
Michaël Prazan is a renowned writer and director of historical documentaries, including Einsatzgruppen, les commandos de la mort, broadcast in 2009, and Ellis Island. Une histoire du rêve américain, produced by Arte and Les Films d'un Jour in 2014.
He holds a CAPES in literature and teaches literature at various lycées in the Créteil academy, as well as writing articles for the press. After publishing several essays, he obtained a doctorate in stylistics at the Sorbonne. He is interested in the radical movements of the 1960s and murderous ideologies. After writing a book on the bloody epic of the Japanese Red Army (Les fanatiques, Seuil 2002), he made a documentary film for Arte (Japon, les Années rouges) while continuing his activities as a journalist and teacher.
In March 2005, he published his thesis, L'Écriture génocidaire: l'antisémitisme en style et en discours (Calmann-Lévy). In the wake of a documentary and a book devoted to the emblematic and controversial figure of the 1960s and 1970s, Pierre Goldman: Pierre Goldman, le frère de l'ombre (Seuil 2005), L'assassinat de Pierre Goldman (France 3 - Kuiv productions, 2005), he stopped teaching to devote himself to writing and directing. This was followed by essays and films on the 1937 Nanking massacre, Roger Garaudy and Ariel Sharon.
Michaël Prazan published his first novel, La Maîtresse de Charles Baudelaire (Plon, 2007). He wrote and directed Einsatzgruppen, les commandos de la mort, a documentary about the genocide of Eastern Jews by the mobile killing commandos and their auxiliaries during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. This three-hour film, broadcast in two parts on France 2 in April 2009, won the prize for best documentary at the Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw in 2010.
In 2014, Michaël Prazan directed Ellis Island. A History of the American Dream, the documentary, produced by Les Films d'un Jour and Arte, looks back at immigration to the United States from 1892 to 1954, through a fascinating polyphonic narrative that embraces both the short and long stories.
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