Gauguin in Tahiti: Paradise Lost

Director: Claudio Poli

Stars: Adriano Giannini, Caroline Boyle-Turner, Paul Yeou Chichong

From Marseille to Tahiti, and from the unspoiled beaches of Polynesia to the museums of the great American metropolises… This journey between the chaotic western world and a distant, ancestral Eden - a return trip, as it turns out – is at the heart of the story in Gauguin a Tahiti. Il paradiso perduto [+]. This new docufilm is set to be screened in Italian cinemas as a special event on 25, 26 and 27 March, as part of the Nexo Digital series, “La Grande Arte al Cinema”. Directed by Claudio Poli (the man behind Hitler Versus Picasso – The Nazi Obsession for Art [+], which won the Nastro d'Argento DOC 2019 for Best Art Event Movie), Gauguin a Tahiti is based on a story by art historian Marco Goldin and Matteo Moneta (the latter also responsible for the script). The film is narrated by Adriano Giannini (Emma [+], currently hard at work on the set of the new Nanni Moretti movie – see our news article) and retraces the career of the French “rebel” painter, Paul Gauguin, an artist who, in 1891 and at the age of 43, left everything behind to move to Polynesia, a world away from civilisation as he knew it, following his primitive inspiration.

“We all dream of jumping on a boat and sailing off to other lands. That’s exactly what he did, that’s why he’s so loved”, art historian Caroline Boyle-Turner rightly tell us, just one of a great number of international experts, museum curators and university professors featuring in the film. Gauguin’s escape from Paris and from the artistic fashions of the time (primarily Impressionism) towards the rugged and wild Brittany coast is just the first leg of a journey which will later see him set sail towards the unknown and arrive in the Tropics after two months of navigation, where he will remain, almost without interval, until his death. The indisputable appeal of his personal story - a radical escape from the modern world and from conformism - is augmented by footage of the places where Gauguin lived out his Polynesian years, and by readings from passages which he himself wrote; letters to friends and family where statements such as “When there is freedom, what is the importance of glory?” or “I am strong because I do what I feel I should do in my body and in my soul”, among many, many others, evoke possibilities of alternative lives which each of us can easily fantasise over.