France

“Each of René Vautier’s films is a pamphlet, a shield for the oppressed and the victims of history, a little war machine in the service of justice. And like weapons in a resistance movement, they are used, exchanged, lent, discarded, destroyed, lost or hidden away and sometimes long forgotten in their cache. In that respect, each of René’s films is an individual case, an episode in what is probably the most noble and romantic story in the history of cinema. Scarred as these films may be, their beauty is genuine, not only in the plastic and stylistic senses, but also in the sense of a cinema raised to the fullness of its necessity and powers. His cinema mobilizes a precise, wide-ranging conception of the rights and duties of images: documenting, telling the truth, doing justice, dialoguing with other images and information, contradicting, counter-attacking, convincing.Read More »

Pierre and Manon are poor. They make documentaries with nothing and they live by doing odd jobs. Pierre meets a young intern, Elisabeth, and she becomes his mistress. But Pierre will not leave Manon for Elisabeth; he wants to keep both.Read More »

A technographic study of e-recycling and neo-colonial mining filmed in the Agbogbloshie electronic waste ground in Accra and illegal gold mines of Ghana. The video constructs a mise-en-abyme as critique in order to dispel the capitalist myth of the immateriality of new technology — thus revealing the mineral weight with which the Cloud is grounded to its earthly origins.Read More »

Quote:
Want a master class in film acting? Check out Kristin Scott Thomas as Juliette, a doctor just out of prison in this spellbinder from writer-director Philippe Claudel. Juliette has been invited by her sister, Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), to share her home in France, along with Léa’s husband, Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), their two adopted Vietnamese daughters and Luc’s sickly father.Read More »

Description
The documentary chronicles the present day stance of the Earth, its climate and how we as the dominant species have long-term repercussions on its future. A theme expressed throughout the documentary is that of linkage; how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a “delicate but crucial” balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient.

Documentary with commentary by Glenn Close. In 200,000 years on earth humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it’s too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its devastation of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption. Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s extraordinarily beautiful and moving film was made over three years, shot from the air in more than fifty countries. It is being screened all over the world on the same date, World Environment Day, to convince us all of our individual and collective responsibility towards the planet.Read More »

Synopsis:
Louis Delluc was one of the most important silent pioneers in France and probably one of the first persons in that country who thought of the cinema as an Art. He was part of group called the “French Impressionist School” ( which also included Epstein, Abel Gance, Marcel L’Herbier and Germaine Dulac ) and was himself one of the first and most influential French film critics. Unfortunately Louis Delluc had a short career dying very young at the age of 33 from tuberculosis, denying the French and the rest of the whole world, his mastery of film and future accomplishments.Read More »

The last film made by legendary French director Abel Gance, Bonaparte et la révolution (1971) was also his final attempt to release the Napoleonic biopic he had begun in the 1920s. Napoléon, vu par Abel Gance (1927) was over nine hours long, but represented only the first of a planned six-film series. Having failed to get funding for the remaining episodes, Gance revamped his silent film as Napoléon Bonaparte (1935) – adding newly-shot scenes and dubbing his decade-old footage. After other abortive attempts to resurrect part or all of his biopic in the 1950s, Gance gained funding from Claude Lelouch to release Bonaparte et la revolution in 1971. This last version recycles footage from the films of 1927 and 1935, as well as material from his television work of the 1960s. The result is a bizarre mishmash of old and new images, performances, and voices – less a coherent film than a document embodying the whole of Gance’s 45-year involvement with his eternally incomplete project. Read More »

Synopsis
A group of young people are organizing. One night, they face the police who came to evacuate an African squat. Carmen meets Hussain, a young afghan poet. Crazy in love, they don’t leave each other. But a curse hangs over the city, papers are carrying death, bodies are falling. Panicked at the idea that he could get arrested, Carmen forbids him to go out, and locks herself with him. Gradually, Hussain get the feeling that she is watching him…Read More »

Synopsis:
A jaded and charming police inspector is assigned along with his cheerful partner to a case involving the mysterious death and/or suicide of a wealthy entrepreneur. The chief suspect is his enchanting wife who was aware that her husband had a mistress. It is also possible that the dead man may be the victim of a radical terrorist group.Read More »