Henri Rousseau: Jungles In Paris

French artist Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) has often been
considered a naive painter, but his work was much admired
by Pablo Picasso and other members of the Parisian avantgarde.
Despite Rousseau’s ravishing depictions of jungle
scenes, he never went beyond France’s borders. His “jungles”
were creative reworkings of images culled from the popular
press and visits to the zoos and botanical gardens of Paris.
This film examines Rousseau’s career in the context of the
French obsession with the exotic in the later nineteenth
century during the nation’s colonial expansion. Drawing
on rare archival footage, photos, and ephemera from the
period, the film also features present-day footage from
Rousseau’s Parisian “jungles”— the parks, gardens, and
greenhouses that fueled his imagination — and interviews
with contemporary scholars.