Nelly Kaplan facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Nelly Kaplan
Nelly Kaplan in 2009
Born	(1931-04-11)11 April 1931 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died	12 November 2020(2020-11-12) (aged 89) Geneva, Switzerland

Nelly Kaplan (born April 11, 1931 – died November 12, 2020) was a famous French writer and film director who was born in Argentina. She loved art, movies, and the people who made them. Nelly first studied economics at the University of Buenos Aires. But her passion for cinema was so strong that she stopped her studies to go to Paris. There, she represented Argentina's new film archive at a big international meeting. She also became a writer for different Argentine newspapers.

In 1954, she met Abel Gance, a well-known film director. Nelly became his assistant and worked closely with him. She helped show a special film program called Magirama, which used three screens at once! She also worked with Gance on his movie Austerlitz (1960). Gance trusted her so much that he let her direct all the action scenes for the second film crew during his movie Cyrano and d'Artagnan (1964).

Around this time, Nelly also wrote a book about Magirama called Le Manifeste d'un art nouveau. In 1960, she published a report about filmmaking called Le Sunlight of Austerlitz.

Starting in 1961, Nelly Kaplan directed many short films about art. These films won lots of awards at different international festivals. Some of her famous art shorts included "Gustave Moreau," which looked at a 19th-century symbolist painter, and "Rudolphe Bresdin," about an engraver. She also made films about the sketchbooks of Victor Hugo and the secret notes of painter André Masson.

Her first major movie, A Very Curious Girl, was so important that a special event was held in 2019 to show her films, called Wild Things: The Ferocious Films of Nelly Kaplan. She also filmed and produced a documentary in 1966 called The Picasso Look. This film showed how Pablo Picasso's artworks were brought to Paris and displayed.

About Nelly Kaplan's Life

Nelly Kaplan was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her family was Russian Jewish. She was known as a "neo-surrealist," which means she was connected to the surrealism art movement. She was even called "the only female film maker linked with surrealism." When she was 17, Nelly moved to France. She later taught and gave lectures at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques.

Nelly's films were shown at many film festivals around the world. She was also a member of SACD, a group for authors and composers, and often served on their Cinema Commission. She regularly contributed to a radio show called "Des Papous dans la Tête" on France Culture. For 25 years, she wrote about cinema for the magazine Le Magazine Littéraire. Nelly Kaplan received many important awards, including Commander of the Arts and Letters, Officer in the National Merite Order, and Cavalier of the Legion of Honor.

Nelly Kaplan passed away from COVID-19 on November 12, 2020, at the age of 89, in a nursing home in Geneva.

Key Moments in Her Career

Nelly Kaplan had a very active career in both writing and filmmaking:

• In 1965, she published a collection of short stories called Le Réservoir des sens under the pen-name Belen. It was very popular.
• In 1967, her mid-length film Le Regard Picasso won a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.
• In 1969, she directed her first feature film, La Fiancée du pirate (also known as A Very Curious Girl).
• She wrote and directed Papa, les petits bateaux in 1971.
• In 1972, she published Le Collier de Ptyx, a "ciné-roman" (a novel written like a film script).
• She co-wrote and produced the film Il faut vivre dangereusement in 1974.
• In 1976, she wrote and directed Néa.
• She wrote and directed Charles et Lucie in 1979.
• In 1983, she wrote and directed Abel Gance et son Napoleon, which was shown at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.
• In 1985, she directed Pattes de velours, a TV movie.
• Her collection of stories, Le Réservoir des sens, was re-published in 1988.
• In 1990, she co-wrote the TV movie Les Mouettes, which had a huge audience in France.
• She wrote and directed Plaisir d'amour in 1990-1991.
• In 1994, major museums in the US, like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Washington, held special shows of all her films.
• In 1996, she was honored with the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur.
• In 1998, she published her novels Aux Orchidées sauvages and Un Manteau de fou-rire.
• In 2002, her novel Ils furent une étrange comète was published. That same year, a film festival called "Kaplan dans tous ses états" celebrated her main films.
• In 2004, a six-DVD set of her films was released, later re-released as Les Films de ma vie/The Films of My Life.
• In 2008 and 2009, she published books of her letters with other famous writers like Abel Gance and André Pieyre de Mandiargues.

Books and Films by Nelly Kaplan

Nelly Kaplan created many different types of works, from novels to documentaries.

Fiction Books

• La géométrie dans les spasmes (1959)
• La Reine des sabbats (1960)
• «...et délivrez nous du mâle» (1960)
• Le Réservoir des sens (short stories, 1966)
• Le Collier de Ptyx (ciné-roman, 1971)
• Mémoires d'une liseuse de draps (novel, 1974)
• Aux Orchidées sauvages (novel, 1998)
• Un Manteau de fou rire (novel, 1998)
• Ils furent une étrange comète (novel, 2002)
• Cuisses de grenouille (novel, 2005)
• Et Pandore en avait deux..! followed by Mon Cygne, mon Signe (2008)
• Ecris-moi tes hauts faits et tes crimes… Correspondance avec André Pieyre de Mandiargues (2009)

Essays on Cinema

• Manifeste d'un art nouveau: la Polyvision (1955)
• Le Sunlight d'Austerlitz, journal d'un tournage (1960)
• Napoleon (1994)

Filmography

Nelly Kaplan also co-wrote the film Il faut vivre dangereusement (1974) by Claude Makovski.

She was also a co-writer for many TV movies directed by Jean Chapot, including:

• Livingstone (1980)
• Un fait d'hiver (1981)
• La Tentation d'Antoine (1981)
• Ce fut un bel été (1982)
• Meurtre sans pourboire (1983)
• Le Regard dans le miroir (1984)
• Le Crépuscule des loups (1986)
• Les Mouettes (1989)
• Honorin et la Loreleï (1991)
• Polly West est de retour (1993)
• Honorin et l'enfant prodigue (1994)
• La Petite fille en costume marin (1997)

For over 22 years, Nelly Kaplan wrote a column for the Magazine Littéraire about how books were turned into films.

See also

In Spanish: Nelly Kaplan para niños

• Lists of writers