FILMS - VIDEOS - POEMS - BROADCAST
Compiled by L. & D. Noack since 1999. Last updated: April 9, 2007
BBC Production Daumier and his Robert Macaire (1972)
The political context of Daumier's work and the lavish illustrations which demonstrate his great artistic skill and brilliant characterisation. Concentrates of the series of lithographs known as the '101 prints of Robert Macaire', first published in Charivari during the years 1836 and 1838.
CAMERON UNIVERSITY Daumier: Politics and Art in Nineteenth-Century France. Video publication, Cameron Univ. Media Services. Nov. 1986. Lawton, OK
EPSTEIN. Jean Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (France, 1925)
Writer: Charles Vayre
Color: Black and White
CAST:
Jean Angelo: Robert Macaire
Alex Allin: Bertrand
Suzanne Bianchetti: Louise de Sermèze
Lou Dovoyna: Victoire (as Dovoyna)
Jean-Pierre Stock: Vicomte de la Ferté
Marquisette Bosky: Jeanne
François Viguier: (as Viguier)
Niblia: (as Mme. Niblia)
HOLLINGER, R. Un artiste republicain en colère, Honoré Daumier [videorecording] / SFP,Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities, 1986
KONICEK, M. Things to remember about Daumier. Short videofilm (4'10") presented at 20th Videofilm Festival Locarno, 1999.
LEENHART, Roger Daumier. 16mm noir et blanc, 14' , 1958, France. Prix de Qualité 1959
McCARTNEY, Paul Soundtrack to the animated featurette "Daumier's Law" to recreate the drawings of Daumier. Premiered at Cannes in 1992.
His first production, "Daumier's Law", won the top prize in 1992 at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.(See comments below)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, New York Honoré Daumier, from the Metropolitan Museum exhibition, English, (28’), 1993, produced, directed and edited, aired by QPTV, channel 35 and 56.
BIRCAR UNVER VHS Video on Daumier at Metropolitan Exhibition 1993, New York.
OKLAHOMA FOUNDATION FOR THE HUMANITIES Daumier: Politics and Art in Nineteenth-Century France. Video publication, Cameron Univ. Media Services. Nov. 1986 / 1987
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY Honoré Daumier: a portrait of French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier (1808-1879). With an introduction to 19th century France, its times, its people, and its politics. 1 hour video cassette, color. 1986
SCHINKEL, G. Hommage an Honoré Daumier (1808 - 1879), in Würdigung seiner Juristenkarikaturen. Vertontes Gedicht Musett-Walzer, 1979
SCHMIDT, G. Kleine Geschichte der Modernen Malerei von Daumier bis Chagall. 10 Radio-Vorträge.
WARDE, R. Videocassette: Daumier. La peinture dans les années 1850 - Daumier et Courbet. Macalaster College, St. Paul, MN, USA
WDR 3 26.2.1983 Rückblende. (H. Daumier). Uni Dortmund 1983
WECHSLER, Judith "Honoré Daumier: One Must Be of One’s Time" 1999. France/USA, film 52 min. Moma. French version: "Honoré Daumier: Il Faut être de son temps" distributed by The Reunion des Musées Nationaux, France
WECHSLER, Judith and EAMES, Ch. "Daumier, Paris, and the Spectator" 1977, distributed by Pyramid Films.
Author unknown
"Honoré Daumier-Witness to a Century." Documentary 1988, 8 minutes. This video uses the drawings and animated sequences of Honoré Daumier to chronicle the history of France around the period of the French Revolution.
STORY BEHIND "DAUMIER'S LAW"
Brian Peterson Nov 26 1993
This article was written by Mark Lewisohn for Club Sandwich in the Summer of
1992. In order to save myself some typing I will excerpt and paraphrase a
little bit. Any mistakes are mine.
Paul McCartney is about to surprise us all once again. Over the last 4 years
he's been putting together a short film animating the work of 19th Century
artist Honore Daumier, and recording what the public will perceive as some
very unMcCartney like music for it.
The film is Daumier's Law. Brought to you by the team behind Rupert
and The Frog Song. Paul, Linda, and director of animation Geoff Dunbar. For
too long Honore Daumier has been an unsung hero, a clear but usually
overlooked influence over artists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and
Picasso. Daumier's Law will ensure that his work finally receives the
attention it merits.
Linda was the first to be enthused by Daumier - back in her school
days. "I went through all periods of different painters and along the way
there were several that grabbed me including Daumier. He was very satirical
about the different classes and fantastic at capturing people's characters."
In 1988 Paul found himself with the time, while preparing for the
Tour, to record some experimental music. It wasn't meant for the film, that
come only after the music was completed. "I wanted to get into some
minimalist music so I came to the studio and started trying to think of very
simple pieces, based around the theme of injustice. .. I got intrigued by
the idea of thinking 'how few notes couls I use, then?' You start off
thinking of just one note and then you embellish it a bit, trying to keep in
the back of your mind to be as minimal as possible. And in the end I think I
abondoned the idea of minimalism and just got into this slightly
experimental music."
Soon the two projects came together. "I went through every drawing
he ever did and really got involved," Linda says, "I got every book on
Daumier and read all about his life and thought that it would be incredible
to do a visual thing for Paul's music. Daumier worked for a newspaper as a
satirical cartoonist and went to prison a few times for his Art. A lot of
his work was about injustice and it's a theme that is so right for our
times."
"I did about 20 minutes of music." adds Paul, "then Linda and I were
looking at some Daumier drawings, so we hooked up the idea of injustice with
my musical pieces, came up with the idea for the film and called Geoff."
"Paul and Linda called and asked if I would like to make a film on
Daumier and I said yes," recalls Geoff Dunbar, "Before Rupert came along I
had made a film on Toulouse-Lautrec so the Daumier idea was very exciting."
"Paul did six pieces of music and they each had a title - Right,
Wrong, Justice, Punishment, Payment, and Release. Then we pored through the
works of Daumier, got everything that was available, and structured the
story from the material. And where we had to link it we invented 'in the
style of'. We hung the story on one character, a man from one drawing by
Daumier."
The injustice theme is skillfully put across during the 15 minute
film, with our Mr. Average wrongfully accussed, wrongfully arrested,
wrongfully convicted in a particularly powerful courtroom scene(Act 3:
Justice), cruelly punished, forced to pay dues and then, at last, expelledby
the tyrannical system, free to rediscover artistic beauty in his midst. "It'
s all topical stuff ," comments Dunbar, "It's a heroic tale I suppose. He
goes through the system and comes out in rags, he's lost all his wordly
possessions and his dignity but regains them at the end by finding beauty
and music."
The most visually stunning section occurs in Act 5 (Payment), when
Daumier's remarkable Gargantua, drawn in 1832, is brought to life. Depicting
the great pear-head of Louis XIV [should read: Louis-Philippe] and his swallowing up of ordinary people
and their riches, it was a drawing for which Daumier was fined and
imprisoned by the French government.
The sheer enormity of work in making Daumier's Law is best explained
by some vital statistics: Production began in mid-1989 and the animation
took two years to complete. With between 12 and 24 drawings per second the
film runs up to 21,000 drawings. Before that they are all done in pencil
too, so that make's 42,000. THe celluloids also have to be shaded or painted
before being photographed, plus all the prepatory photos and layouts of the
scenes, another 35,000 drawings. "The sequence of the mandolin player (Act
6, Release) along took one artist three months," comments Geoff, "plus there
were scenes, only natural in a film project, that wouldn't fit in, which
were heaved out and confined to the bin."
It's a mark of the team's achievement that no difference between the
original work and theirsis discernable to the naked eye. "Doing a film like
this has it's bonuses," remarks Dunbar, "and one learns so much more than if
you just studied it. You're actually in it, you've got to make it move, to
create new scenes which will dovetail with the original."
Paul supplied 20 minutes of instrumental music, of which 15 is used.
It may not be minimalist in the true sense of the word, but certainly, in
places, it is pretty minimal. And it changes dramatically depending on the
Act, from subtle tinkling percussion effects to more strident piano and
electric guitar passages and some lovely acoustic work. "The great thing in
animation is that they need the music before the film," comments Paul' "In
animation they follow what you lay down."
"Paul was inspired by Daumier and I was inspired by the music'"
comments Geoff, "And we do have a good sense of what we're both thinking and
saying. With the Daumier music it's so much a departure for Paul ,such a
brave direction to go in, that I had to sit down and listen to it many times
over"
"What was especially thrilling was when we did the sound mix and
Paul and I are sitting at the bakc of the theatre. There it was again - the
strength of the music was still there. WE had been listening to it every
day, sections of it repeated again and again, and it had become an object of
work. So for the strength to still be there two years later was remarkable."
Delighted to be "probably the only animator in the world who has a
gold disk", pointing to his award for 'We All Stand Together', Dunbar is
usually occupied making animated TV commercials and is presently engaged in
bringing to the screen another beloved British children's character, Beatrix
Potter's Peter Rabbit.
As for the musical element, Paul comments, "I've also got two other
pieces of the same sort of theme and of similar length, so the idea at some
point may be to release everything together on record, We'll see."
PAUL McCARTNEY: "DAUMIER'S LAW"
Some comments collected from the Internet.
Soundtrack to the animated featurette "Daumier's Law" to recreate the drawings of Daumier. Premiered at Cannes in 1992.
His first production, "Daumier's Law," won the top prize in 1992 at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.
The commercial 80s kicked off with the promising, eccentric McCartney II (a queer fish abundant with idiosyncratic vocals) and produced lots more hits. Late in 1989 Paul repaired to his studio with the intention, for his own pleasure, of laying down some minimalist music. What transpired was full-blown experimentation, uncontaminated by melody or vocals, fifteen minutes of which was later soundtracked to the animated featurette Daumier's Law, produced by Paul's company in a bid to recreate the drawings of French artist Honoré Daumier. With its six atypical McCartney pieces the film premiered at Cannes in 1992. Text copyright © Chris Fox, 2000
First published by Rubberneck, November 2000
Cannes 92: Best short nominee
Paul is named the world's first recipient of the Swedish Polar Music Award, a Nobel-prize for music. Paul reveals Daumier's Law, an animated short film entered for the Cannes Film Festival, which he co-produced and composed the score. Paul, Linda and the band - with new drummer Blair Cunningham replacing Chris Whitten - record his first studio album for three years, Off The Ground. Daumier's Law wins the BAFTA prize for the best short animated film at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.
But a most successful partnership has flourished on the back of Macca's efforts.
In 1989 McCartney laid down a musical score for a new film project, 'Daumier's Law'.
Dunbar was commissioned to direct and produce the 15min short which brought the
drawings of French artist Honoré Daumier into animated life. It premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1992 and, like Frog Song eight years earlier, collected a
BAFTA for Best Animated Short. In 1998 Macca and Dunbar teamed again on the
video to 'Tropical Island Hum'. And then, last year they premiered their acclaimed
new short film 'Tuesday'. Adapted from the book by David Weisner, this is another
amphibian-filled fantasy about frogs on Lilly pads who, on one particular Tuesday
evening take a twilight flight into town. The film is narrated by actor Dustin Hoffman
and is dedicated to Paul's late wife Linda. It was shown at the Venice Film Festival
and went on to give the Macca/Dunbar partnership their third BAFTA Nomination.
Whilst promoting the project in Italy Macca was very vocal about his passion for
animation and commitment to making a full-length feature soon - even giving a hint
that it might again feature frogs... Frogs are good, but little bears would be
better still, eh?
Nicolette van Gendt (1955) got a solid training in fine art drawing and painting, graphic design, initially working as an illustrator and portrait painter. Living and working in the UK since 1978, she became involved in animation in 1985. After doing storyboards, lay outs and backgrounds, she evolved from trainee inbetweener to assistant animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She was further introduced to the art of animation by Gill Brooks, a well known British art director.
In 1991 she did character design, layouts and animation on Geoff Dunbar's Daumier's Law, which in 1992 received a BAFTA award for best animated film. Since she has worked as an animator for various British commercial studio's, and as lead animator on different large productions.
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