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ABOUT THE FILM: 

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6-Part Series  |   France - Italy

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Serein Productions (France - Lead Producer), WellSee Productions (Italy), MediaFusion Entertainment (Louisiana) Producer

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Production Status: In Development

 

Genre: Historical Drama/Adventure

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Language: French/Italian/English

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Tagline: Impressions of an Artist

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Logline: Set in Paris, Italy and New Orleans, DEGAS peers into his early years before his meteoric rise to become one of history's greatest painters. 

 

Production Company:  Serein Productions (France)

 

Written & Produced by: Carol Bidault de l'Isle (France)

Co-Producer: Angelisa Castronovo (Italy)

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Executive Producers and Co-Writers: Rory Schmitt & Rosary O'Neill

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Associate Producer: Anne Pincus

 

Similar films: RENOIR & VAN GOGH

 

Locations: France, Italy, New Orleans​

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FINANCING IN PLACE: 80% (In Equity and Tax incentives)

Seeking financing for the Louisiana Production: 20%

 

SYNOPSIS:

The early years of Edgar Degas were spent in Paris and Italy, fighting to pursue his art against the pressures to join the family business. At the age of 12, Edgar’s mother, Celestine Musson de Gas, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, dies, leaving 5 young children, Edgar being the oldest. His father, Auguste de Gas, a wealthy banker and investor, is both proud of his son’s artistic gifts and pushes him to pursue a career in law in order to follow the family businesses around the world. His father owned banks in Naples and Florence. His close relationship with his mother’s family led the girls from New Orleans to spend four years in Paris with Degas’ family, following the tradition of protecting women during wartime by sending them to France. His cousin Estelle, or "Telle," was young, beautiful, and widowed from a marriage to a Civil War hero, a nephew of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and her sister Desiree, or "Didi." Edgar escorted them to the opera, races, the symphony, theater openings, and luxurious dinners. From them, he heard about New Orleans, which, prior to the Civil War, had been as cultured as New York City (the first opera house in the US, the largest city park, one of the oldest buildings—Ursuline Convent, the oldest cathedral—St. Louis Cathedral, etc.). Painters like Audubon had been discovered in Louisiana, and great architects were actively building a mini-Paris.

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In 1872, at the behest of his father, who had invested heavily in the South, and his youngest brother, René, Edgar travels to New Orleans.  He finds his mother's family, the Mussons, once a family of great wealth, now deep in debt, during the desperate years of the reconstruction of the US Civil War. Michel Musson, father of Estelle, Desiree, and Matilde, had lost everything, including their magnificent Garden District home and their vast plantation upriver. His brother René, his wife Estelle, and their children struggle as their cotton business fails. They implore Edgar to help them.

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He returns to Paris with an intensified drive to use his art to not only break through the mountain of debt his family accumulated but also focus in a new direction, which leads him to be one of the founders of the Impressionist movement.

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About the Research Team:

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​​Bios:

- Writer/ Producer: Carol Bidault de l'Isle

Carol Bidault de l’Isle is an award-winning producer, specialized in international motion picture/television financing, distribution, media asset acquisitions, and management. She brings with her over 30 years of industry experience in the United States, Europe and, Latin America. She recently co-produced in association with Serein Productions DALILAND directed by Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO), starring Erza Miller, Ben Kingsley, produced THE SECURITY OF FEAR, starring Brad Dourif, William Baldwin, Jean-Marc Barr); as well as financing consultant for various productions. Read more

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- Italian Co-Producer: Angelisa Castronovo

Angelisa Castronovo is an attorney specialized in intellectual property, copyright and entertainment rights, contracts, and negotiations. She assists several SMEs in the protection of their intellectual property rights, as well as numerous artists, film, television, and theater production companies, international co-productions, the audiovisual sector in general, and Italian and foreign financial sponsors.

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Co-Writer/Executive Producer: ​Rory O’Neill Schmitt, PhD

Rory O’Neill Schmitt, Ph.D. is a writer, visual artist, and filmmaker. A 7th generation New Orleanian, Rory co-wrote Edgar Degas: The Impressionable Years screenplay because she identified Degas’s trip to New Orleans as the catalyst to his launching his career. She looks forward to bringing these early years of artist's life to the silver screen. ​ She produced: South Wind, with Ou Phrontis Co.’s Stephen Billick and Barret O’Brien (set in Italy) and Garden District with Rosary O’Neill (set in New Orleans). She produced the television series, The Long Long Night, starring Mark Duplass and Barret O’Brien (which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Festival). Currently, Rory works at the University of Southern California.

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Co-Writer/Executive Producer: Rosary Hartel O’Neill, PhD

Rosary Hartel O’Neill, Ph.D., a 6th generation, Louisiana native, lives in New Orleans and New York City. She is the author of seven published books and twenty-five plays (Samuel French, Inc.) ​Her pantheon includes a 12-episode TV series, written under five fellowships with David Black of Law and Order at Harvard University and Norman Mailer’s homes in Provincetown, Maine and Brooklyn, New York. Her screenplays include: Naked in New Orleans and The Vampire’s Last Bite, now in development at Herbert Berghoff Studios, NYC. Her play, John Singer Sargent and Madame X have been optioned for a movie. O’Neill is also the creator of a New Orleans TV series in development, Garden District. ​​Her play, Degas in New Orleans, first produced at the Sorbonne, will be heralded in Paris in 2021 at the American Embassy and has been developed into a historical novel and a screenplay, Edgar Degas: The Impressionable Years. ​Rosary is candid about the fact that her play, although strongly rooted in history, is a work of fiction. It focused on the concept that Edgar and his married cousin, Telle, may have been secretly in love, although the exact details of their actual relationship remain unknown.​

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