Gérard Patris

Gérard Patris (1931 − 1990) was a French film director and television director who died in a car accident in 1990 in Chailles. His works include the documentary film Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life.

After high school in Poitiers, Gérard Patris joined an art school in Paris. Early in his career, Patris founded a lithography workshop, which allowed him to meet many of the major artists of the post-war period for the acquisition of prints, such as Dubuffet, Sprockets, Manessier, Sonderborg, Arman, Hayter, Hartung, and Matta. Gérard Patris had two daughters from different partners. The late muse of Picasso, Sylvette David (now in her 70s and known as Lydia Corbett, see Sylvette), and Marie-Claire Schaeffer, his first wife, were the two mothers. Marie-Claire Schaeffer is the daughter of composer Pierre Schaeffer, often presented as the father of music concrete. This meeting enabled him to participate in the ORTF's research service to create relationships between sound, text, and image, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer. Gérard Patris was the founder of "The Movies Chesnaie", unit production television whose workshops were based in the cars of the clinical Chailles. His various encounters with artists from the worlds of music, painting, and sculpture made up the core of his filmography.