Paul Signac (1863-1935) was one of the most important painters who followed the French Impressionists. Along with Georges Seurat, Signac - who had taught himself to paint by studying the works of Monet - abandoned Impressionism to experiment with a new technique: Pointillism, or Divisionism, the technique of using myriad tiny dots of paint.

This documentary sets Signac's life and work in the context of his day, evoking the vibrancy and vitality of the art scene at that time. The screen is alive with his harmonious canvases employing mosaic-like blocks of pure colour and also those of his fellow artists and friends, among them Pissarro and van Gogh, as well as Seurat.

Extracts from Signac's writings and correspondence form an important part of the commentary and he is revealed as someone both passionate and rational, a man who thought actively about art and about the social and political issues that prevailed.

Signac was also a keen sailor and traveller, and one of the joys of the film is seeing his paintings of places where he spent time juxtaposed with contemporaneous archive photographs and footage of the same locations today: St Tropez, Montmartre, the Seine at Asnières, Collioure, Venice and Brittany.