Natan - Trailer from screenworksfilmandtv
Natan
Paul Duane and David Cairns
Funded under Reel Art, the Arts Council's creative documentary scheme operated in association with Filmbase and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
Natan tells the story of one of French cinema's forgotten pioneers, an immigrant who made it his ambition to create a truly French national cinema, the man who did more than anyone else to bring sound film to France, who started France's first television company, first cinema advertising company, experimenting with cinemascope and colour and popularising the Pathé newsreel. He has been erased from history. But why? Natan is simultaneously a visually experimental murder mystery, an inspiring portrait of the birth of cinema and a savage history of French bigotry in the 1920s and 30s.
Natan has been screened at a number of major festivals including the Telluride Film Festival, Lumiére Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival.