ONCE UPON A TIME… KING KONG

Protagonists:

• Steve FRASER, historian
• Michel LE BRIS, writer, head of the Festival “Etonnants voyageurs” (Amazing Travellers)
• Stéphane MARTIN, president of the Quai Branly Museum
• Roger BOULAY, ethnologist
• Caroline ELIACHEFF, psychoanalyst
• Jean-Claude CARRIÈRE, screenwriter

Once upon a time in 1933, there was a film by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.

Portrait of a film: a cult film in the history of cinema. The impossible love story between an Indonesian gorilla, an oversized beast from the depths of time, and a sexy blonde, an unemployed New York starlet. As the beast becomes increasingly human, men behave like savages.

Portrait of an era: the crisis of the 1920s in Europe after the global bloodbath, and the great depression that hit the world from the 29th, fostered a golden age of fantasy cinema through which the great fears are expressed while in the world political monsters are unleashed.

Portrait of two filmmakers: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack are two adventurers, voluntary aviators in Europe during the First World War, who fight the Red Army alongside the Poles. They organize expeditions and become documentary filmmakers. Together with their teams, they produce two masterpieces: The most dangerous game in 32 and King Kong in 33.