French

Pascal makes a modest living selling newspapers on the streets of Paris. He may have a surly temperament but he is a good natured soul at heart, always ready to help a fellow creature if he can. Naturally, when he sees a man jump into the River Seine, he does not hesitate to come to his rescue. The visibly distressed man, Didier, reveals he was driven to this desperate act by his family, in particular his wife Catherine who is determined to rob him of his fortune. Moved by this tale of woe, Pascal offers to help Didier in any way he can. Didier suggests that they go back to his house to pick up some money. As he enters the house, Pascal unwittingly falls into a carefully laid trap. Alerted by Catherine, the police suddenly turn up and find the body of a dead man in the house. Read More »

A law student regularly visits a Paris bakery to flirt with a brunette employee.Read More »

A film about German painter Max Ernst made by Gérard Patris.Read More »

The international breakthrough of acclaimed filmmaker Claire Denis, Chocolat is set in a remote town in Cameroon during the last days of France’s colonies in Africa.

Claire Denis’s award-winning autobiographical film traces a young white woman’s return to her youth in pre-independence French Cameroon, haunted by strong memories of black African Protee, the family’s “houseboy” and a man of great nobility, intelligence and beauty. Chocolat is a stirring & subtle examination of intricate relationships in a racist society and the human damage exacted on both the colonized and colonizer.Read More »

Quote:
A group of young people from the St. Denis banlieu, from different ethnic and geographic backgrounds, participate in a school contest to tell their neighborhood, whose prize is a trip to Milan. With the collaboration of the historical jazz musician Archie Shepp, they create a poetic hymn to the racialized and invisible France that rises above marginalization. The film, also produced by another filmmaker, Agnès Varda, is a collaboration on its own bill between the filmmaker and teenagers.Read More »

In the 70’s, Bokolo and Mamadou sweepers in the city of Paris, looking for a way to pay for the return home of one of their sick comrades. When they discover an old book of recipes in the trash, the idea came to participate in a televised game of decline precisely the ingredients of the best dishes of French cuisine. They memorize the recipes sauces, puddings and desserts.Read More »

Nadja is a guest student, who stays at Cité Universitaire and visits the Sorbonne, while preparing a thesis on Proust. Besides her student life she likes to stroll about Paris, to explore the variety of this wide and open city. She knows Saint-Germain-des-Prés well, but feels more comfortable among the bohemians, painters and writers in Montparnasse. Sometimes she wants to get out of the narrow area of intellectual Paris. She then goes to the park Buttes Chaumont and the working class neighborhood of Belleville. There she discovers a world that is simpler and more characteristic of France. This helps her to distance herself from everything that was superficial in her life. She thinks that Paris teaches you more about yourself than you learn about the city.Read More »

Quote:
This interview with Castoriadis was conducted in 1989 by famed filmmaker Chris Marker for Marker’s own television series L’héritage de la chouette (“The Owl’s Legacy”). Eighty-one minutes long, the raw footage originally recorded in French has been translated into English (via easy-to-read subtitles) and edited anonymously as a public service. Here, Castoriadis lays out and examines the contributions of ancient Greece to questions of contemporary relevance relating to democracy, politics, philosophy, art, poetry, economic and social reorganization, and the creative chaos that underlies all existence.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘For many years, Jean Servettaz has worked as a mountain guide in Chamonix but, too aware of the risks of his profession, he gives this up so that he can run a guest house for tourists. He intends that his son Pierre will follow his example and become a hotelier but Pierre is too in love with the mountains to even consider such an idea. A head injury sustained in a climbing accident puts paid to Pierre’s dreams of becoming a guide. Afflicted with vertigo, he leaves for Paris and works as a receptionist in a luxury hotel. It isn’t long before Pierre is drawn back to the snow-capped mountains and, with the help of his fiancée Alice he makes another attempt to overcome his fear of heights. When his father is caught in a thunderstorm whilst taking a tourist across a hazardous stretch of the mountains Pierre has a chance to prove himself…’
– James TraversRead More »