Nelly Kaplan

Nelly Kaplan (11 April 1931 – 12 November 2020) was an Argentine-born French writer and film director who focused on the arts, film, and filmmakers. She studied economics at the University of Buenos Aires. Passionate about cinema, she abruptly put her studies on hold to go to Paris to represent the new Argentine film archive at an international convention and later became a correspondent for different Argentine newspapers. She met Abel Gance in 1954, who gave her the opportunity to work on the film "La tour de Nesle".
She became Gance's assistant during the film and showed the program "Magirama" (triple screen) in Polyvision, then, still at Gance's side, she collaborated with him on "Austerlitz" (1960). He trusted her with the direction of all the second crew's action scenes during the filming of his movie "Cyrano and d'Artagnan" ("Cyrano et d'Artagnan", 1964).
Meanwhile, she published her work about "Magirama" under the name "Le Manifeste d'un art nouveau", with a preface by Philippe Soupault. In 1960, she published a film report entitled "Le Sunlight of Austerlitz", through the Plon publishing house.
Beginning in 1961, she directed an entire series of art shorts, which won numerous prizes in various international festivals. Among these shorts were "Gustave Moreau," an analysis of the 19th century symbolist painter; "Rudolphe Bresdin," the engraver; "Dessins et merveilles," on the sketchbooks of Victor Hugo, as well as "Les années 25 ", " La Nouvelle Orangerie ", "Abel Gance hier et demain ", " A la source, la femme aimée", titles based on the secret notebooks of the painter André Masson.
Her first feature movie, "A Very Curious Girl," was the focus of a Kaplan retrospective in 2019, "Wild Things: The Ferocious Films of Nelly Kaplan". She filmed and produced a 1966 documentary, "The Picasso Look," about the works of Picasso being delivered and displayed in Paris. 
Biography.
Nelly Kaplan was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a Russian Jewish family. A "neo-surrealist," she was "the only female film maker linked with surrealism." Kaplan left for France at the age of 17. She served as a professor and lecturer at Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques. While Kaplan's films have been marketed as soft-core pornography, her works are often female-centered and approach eroticism from a woman's point of view.
Her films have been shown at many international festivals. As a member of the SACD, she took part in the board of directors as a member of the Cinema Commission on several occasions. Kaplan regularly collaborated on the show "Des Papous dans la Tête," on France Culture. She contributed to the cinema section of the magazine "Le Magazine Littéraire" for 25 years. Kaplan was Commander of the Arts and Letters, Officer in the National Merite Order, Cavalier of the Legion of Honor, and Academician of the Alphonse Allais Academy.
Nelly Kaplan died in a nursing home from COVID-19 on 12 November 2020 in Geneva.
Filmography.
Co-writer of the film "Il faut vivre dangereusement", by Claude Makovski, 1974.
Co-writer of Jean Chapot's téléfilms: 
Collaborated over 22 years to the "Magazine Littéraire" with a column on film adaptations from books.