This remarkable film retraces the life and work of the beloved artist Marc Chagall. Much of the narrative is told in his own words, drawn from his autobiography, Ma Vie, interspersed with unique film footage of Chagall being interviewed as he paints. An intimate picture of the mischievous painter and his peripatetic life emerges through interviews of the many personalities in the art world which Chagall inhabited including Apollinaire, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Mayakovski, and Malraux.

Extensive use of rare historical film adds richness to this astounding biography of the man who was born in the shtetl of Vitebsk in tsarist Russia and forced to join the Russian Army at the outbreak of World War I before being asked by the Bolsheviks to open an art school. He later moved to Paris, before fleeing in 1939 to New York, where he collaborated on projects with other artists in exile including Duchamps, Calder, Tanguy, Stravinsky, and Massine.

Chagall’s attempts to connect the Jewish traditions of his childhood to the artistic modernity of his time yielded a profoundly original oeuvre removed from the prevailing currents of art in the 20th century. As Chagall noted, “I chose painting because it seemed a window through which I could take flight to another world.”

"Highly recommended. . . The film, like the painting, is rich with the artist's creative energy, imagery and narrative—drawn in part from his illustrated memoir, My Life, a poetic self-portrait of his early years in Russia."
‒Educational Media Reviews Online

International Federation of Television Archives Award, 2004