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Birthday:
04-11-1931
Deathday:
11-12-2020 (89 years)
Birthplace:
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Biography
Born in Argentina to a Russian Jewish family, Nelly Kaplan relocated to Paris at age seventeen, where she became an assistant to legendary director Abel Gance before directing her first feature, the caustic revenge comedy A Very Curious Girl. Transgressive, satirical, and surreal, Kaplan's films are defined by their proactive female protagonists.
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Their works
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Polly West est de retour
Act like Salomé von Jung
event1993
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Polly West, a very rich American star, has bought the castle of Sainte Apolline, a small village in Provence. As soon as she arrives, the dynamic actress causes trouble among the inhabitants. After having received her in confession, the priest seems to be taken by madness. To add to the turmoil, the country warden and the grocer enter her service. Honorin, the mayor, tries to cope and maintain order. While the people of the village keep asking questions, Polly flies to the rescue of the beautiful Italian girl Clara, who has been raped by the landlord Léonce. Soon, Honotin discovers that Polly is buying up the village's land using a few nominees. He then understands that this woman is not a stranger and that, a few years ago, the villagers chased her away because she was a mother, and these same villagers caused the death of her parents. Polly has returned to seek revenge.
Tower of Lust
Act like Alice
event1955 star_border 5
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France, the beginning of the XIV century. Every night, Queen Margaret of Burgundy and her two sisters arrange orgies, to which beautiful nobles are invited. The young men were brought blindfolded, and after a night of love they were killed and their corpses thrown into the river, because the queen was afraid that her husband would learn about her adventures. One of her lovers managed to escape death. He knows the secrets of the queen, knows that she once gave birth to a son from him, claims that he has evidence that Margarita wanted to kill her father and blackmails her.
La prima donna
Act like La Pasta
event1964 star_border 5
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A story of "La Pasta", a renowned prima donna, and her extraordinary rival.
Papa, the Lil' Boats
Act like Lady with her Saint-Bernard
event1971 star_border 4.2
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In this whimsical French comedy, Cookie (aka Venus de Palma) is a tough, sweet little rich girl, and is rather smart, too. She's smart enough and charming enough to outwit her kidnappers by setting one against the other until they have all killed each other or died trying to prove thier worth to her.
Charles and Lucie
Act like Nostradama
event1979 star_border 5.6
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An old and poor couple, Charles and Lucie, scrape by working as a concierge and an untalented antique dealer, respectively. But one day, their dreary daily routine is disrupted by the surprising news that they have inherited a luxurious house in the South of France.
One Must Live Dangerously
event1975 star_border 4.3
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Richard is a private detective. He makes a good money from marital infidelity: the deceived husband and wife generously paid him for proof of their infidelity "halves"...
Abel Gance, Yesterday and Tomorrow
Act like Self
event1963 star_border 6
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The life and work of Abel Gance as told by himself. Includes extracts from many of his films and considers his contribution to the cinema.
The Battle of Austerlitz
Act like Madame Récamier
event1960 star_border 6.5
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Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.
Midi Première
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1975 star_border 10
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Midi Première is a French variety show presented by Danièle Gilbert, directed by Jacques Pierre and broadcast from January 6, 1975 until January 1, 1982 on TF1. The program was generally broadcast between 12:15 p.m. and 12:55 p.m., then giving way to the 1:00 p.m. TV news. However, the broadcast schedule could change, depending on the guests, and the setting where the recording of the program was shot. Certain performances by artists who have become cult like the one where Ringo jostles with a demonstrator in interpretation (1977), that of Dalida with the title There is always a song with the soundtrack that does not start, twice, at the right speed (1978), Claude François and his Clodettes, who, in the provinces, are unable to join "the set" in order to interpret his song, the latter being taken by the crowd of delirious fans (summer 1977) . The group Supertramp performed there with the title "Dreamer" on March 8, 1975.
Le Regard dans le miroir
Act like Laura (4 ep.)
event1985 star_border 6
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Dora Stern, an American photographer living in Paris, wakes up from the same nightmare over and over again. In a small antique store she finds a collage with fearful eyes that haunt her. At home she removes the layers of the collage until she can see the original photo showing a young woman in fear who looks exactly like Dora Stern. But who is this woman?
Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Act like Self (2 ep.)
event1975 star_border 6
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A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
A Very Curious Girl
Director (1 ep.)
event1969 star_border 6.3
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Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.
Nea
Director (1 ep.)
event1976 star_border 4.7
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In Genève, bookseller and publisher Axel Thorpe catches willful, rich 16-year-old Sibylle Ashby shoplifting. She brags about her writing, so he challenges her to produce a book. She writes an erotic novel that Thorpe publishes anonymously, and it becomes a best seller. She also tries to capture the love of this 40-year-old publisher but he drops her for her older sister.
The Pleasure of Love
Director (1 ep.)
event1991 star_border 4.5
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Guillaume de Burlador is a private tutor who hits a low point sufficiently severe for him to contemplate a somewhat theatrical suicide. Instead he is taken off by flying boat to a mad French colonial possession bedecked by mad servants and crazy decor. Three educated and rather gorgeous women live there, and they hire him to tutor a young teenager, but more with plans to seduce him in mind.
Honorin et l'enfant prodigue
Writer (1 ep.)
event1994 star_border 3.5
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In 1930, Honorin, the mayor of a small village, receives a visit from a young girl claiming to be his child.
The Cocottes
Writer (1 ep.)
event1991 star_border 4
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A small village lies peacefully nestled in the hills beneath the Provence sun... until the arrival of an odd group of vacationers. Who are these gorgeous young women from the big city strolling on the village square under the watchful eye of a chaperone as beautiful as she is authoritarian? Scandal arises when it’s learned these dreamy creatures are none other than the employees of a Marseille brothel come to enjoy the good clean air of the country. All hell breaks loose as the villagers take a stand for or against the presence of these "ladies of pleasure". The mayor is called on to relay women of the moral rules of the region to the women. But the fact remains, they can’t be forced to leave: while they have no intention of plying their trade, no law exists to bring their country retreat to a premature end. Different mentalities are revealed, passions unbridled, love kindled... and doesn’t love always solve everything in the end?
Abel Gance et son Napoléon
Director (1 ep.)
event1984 star_border 5.3
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This documentary focuses on the making of the 235-minute, silent epic Napoleon, the masterpiece of French director/writer/actor Abel Gance. Napoleon showcased Gance's talents with the camera, his use of multiple-images (like a split screen), and his handling of crowded action scenes -- all brought forward in this documentary by his later assistant, Nelly Kaplan. While Gance was shooting Napoleon in 1925-26, he and his crew were also being filmed for a documentary titled Autour de Napoleon. The only extant reels from that documentary are included in this film, as well as views of Gance's unique "triptychs" -- three different scenes lined up side-by-side across a super-wide screen to convey the effect of a panorama, or of three separate interludes. Nelly Kaplan put together this documentary using old footage, such as Gance filming the famous snowball fight at the Brienne military school and still photographs and excerpts from Gance's production diaries.
Velvet Paws
Director (1 ep.)
event2019
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Bernadette Lafont and Michel Bouquet reteam with Kaplan as, respectively, a clairvoyant and a criminologist drawn into the orbit of widow Caroline Sihol; when the latter’s late husband Pierre Arditi turns out to yet have surprises up his sleeve for all of them, Kaplan hones in on the women’s by-necessity connection. The director foregoes her own cameo in favor of ones for colleagues Jean Chapot and Claude Makovski, both as nurses.
A la source, la femme aimée
Director (1 ep.)
event1965
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Documentary on erotic drawings by the painter André Masson.
I Accuse! [Magirama]
Director (1 ep.)
event1956
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Magirama version, which is one of the four segments of the Magirama program, designed to illustrate the expressive possibilities of director Abel Gance's creation, Polyvision and Sonore Perspective, which used three screens to present a drama of simultaneous images. This program was shown the first time in 1956 in the Cinema theater "Studio 28" in Paris. After serving in the trenches of World War I, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war. He thinks he has succeeded, but the government subverts his discovery, and Europe slides with seeming inevitability toward World War II. In desperation, Diaz summons the ghosts of the war dead from the graves and fields of France to give silent, accusing protest.
Gustave Moreau
Director (1 ep.)
event1962
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A brilliant analysis of 19th century French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, known for his fantastical and mythological subjects, and who remains to these days an influential figure in the birth of modern art.
Rodolphe Bresdin
Director (1 ep.)
event1962
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Short film by Nelly Kaplan about the life and works of Rodolphe Bresdin
The Picasso Look
Director (1 ep.)
event1967
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On the 1967 huge Picasso exhibition in Paris, celebrating the 85 anniversary of the painter.
Dessins et merveilles
Director (1 ep.)
event1966
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A short film by Nelly Kaplan on Victor Hugo's drawings.
Magirama
Director (1 ep.)
event1958
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A portmanteau work in four segments,designed to illustrate the expressive possibilities of director Abel Gance,s creation, Polyvision, which preceded the American invention of Cinerama, and used three screens to present a drama of simultaneous images.
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