Thie history of our film company
Based in Paris, Cinématographique Lyre is a family business founded in 1952 by Alberto Barsanti. Its mission is to preserve and introduce new generations to films from Europe's cinematic heritage, particularly Italian and French.
Yesterday...
When Alberto Barsanti arrived from Italy after the Second World War to assist the director of the Vieux Colombier theater in Paris, he brought with him a great classical culture, a taste for cinema and art in general, his deep love of Italy and all his creativity. At the same time as meeting Jean Renoir and working as a volunteer on Le Carrosse d'Or, Alberto Barsanti decided to create the Cinématographique Lyre company to take part in co-productions with Italy. From 1952 onwards, Cinématographique Lyre was dedicated to promoting European cinema, particularly Italian, in France.
In this capacity, Cinématographique Lyre has actively supported directors and screenwriters at the very start of their careers, as well as unknowns such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mauro Bolognini in Italy, and Henri Colpi and Bertrand Tavernier in France. His name is associated with many of the avant-garde co-productions of European cinema in the 1960s, such as L'Avventura (Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes Festival in 1960), Handsome Antonio (Voile d'Or at the Locarno Festival in 1960), Hands over the City (Lion d'Or at the Venice Festival in 1963), La Viaccia (in competition at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival), La Rimpatria (Fipresci Prize at the 1963 Berlin Film Festival), The Terrorist (Italian Critics' Prize at the 1965 Venice Film Festival) and The Long absence (Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival).
In the 1970s, Cinématographique Lyre distributed a number of classic and genre Italian films in French cinemas.
In the late 1980s, it dubbed mythical works from the RKO catalog (Bringing Up Baby, Sylvia Scarlett, Back to Bataam...), as well as several works from the catalogs of various American distributors, including CBS Fox and CIC Vidéo.
When Alberto Barsanti died in December 1987, his wife, Maria Barsanti, took over the Cinématographique Lyre company. As markets evolved, Maria Barsanti took advantage of the boom in television, and then DVD, to refocus her activities on these two forms of exploitation with the main French-language channels and publishers.
And today…
Today, it's their daughter, Patricia Barsanti, who enthusiastically continues the mission that Cinématographique Lyre set itself over 65 years ago: to bring to life, to watch and, above all, to revisit the classic and little-known heritage films in the catalogs it manages.
The company is committed to keeping pace with developments in new markets, preserving and restoring the films in its catalog, supporting or co-producing documentaries on the history of European cinema, and continuing to encourage the work of tomorrow's directors and scriptwriters.
Contact our film company to find out more about the independent films in our catalog!