Social & External
The people behind it
Renée Carl
Marie-Jeanne la lingère
René Navarre
Roussot
Edmund Breon
Paul Manson
Georges Tréville
Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.
Audiovisual view for decisive days in a life of a lightly hearing person.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.
A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.
Karin, a young girl, gets an hour free from school. She spends it across the street from the school, in the apartment of an older photographer.
Silent film from 1915 which draws on the story of Carmen
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.
American silent drama film following an early Vitagraph leading man and matinee idol. Prints of the film are held at the Library of Congress and George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection.
This film begins with the invocation of 'almighty god' at a river where several people are gathered. The child god Krishna rises out of the water astride the demon snake Kaliya. Then we see Yashoda as she rocks the sleeping Krishna's crib and imagines the god as Gopala. The next scene shows Kamsa fantasizing about Krishna threateningly duplicated many times around him. Kamsa then imagines himself dead as his severed head rises up and descends again. People of all castes pay obeisance to the deity with the title-card: 'may this humble offering be accepted by the Lord'.
God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.
The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.
A gangster falls for a blind violinist, only for his mobster rivals to kidnap her.
Caught off-guard by Indian mutineers, a British soldier saves his last bullet for his daughter, lest she be taken.
Photoplay and Direction by Charles Busch
A Spanish soldier falls under the spell of a fiery gypsy girl named Carmen. His obsession with her leads to his ruin.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight.
Julien and Marie have enjoyed 15 years of seemingly stable marriage until Anaëlle, Julien’s childhood flame, returns. Her sudden presence awakens old insecurities in Marie, who begins to doubt Julien’s devotion and question her self-worth. Amid this emotional storm, Marie is drawn to Thomas, a charismatic stranger who offers her the validation she craves.
In the summer of 1991 an elderly woman Ghislaine Marchal is found murdered in the basement of her home with the message "Omar M'a Tuer" (Omar has kill me) written beside in her own blood. Despite a lack of forensic or DNA evidence, her Moroccan gardener Omar Raddad is found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in a French prison. Shocked by the case, and convinced of his innocence, journalist Pierre-Emmanuel Vaugrenard moves to Nice to investigate, and uncover the truth...
A reporter, fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. While working she overhears a noisy argument in the neighboring house, being conducted largely in German and involving her HUAC prosecutor. She begins to investigate, enlisting the help of the FBI Agent initially detailed to surveil her.
Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Sebastien Nicolas is a reclusive realtor leading a double life – in his spare time he creates complex disguises based on acquaintances. Combined with minutely studied and rehearsed impersonations, Sebastien can disappear completely into other people's lives. Things spiral out of control after he impersonates the wrong man.
Journalist Denis Robert sparked a storm in the world of European finance by denouncing the murky operations of banking firm Clearstream. His quest to reveal the truth behind a secret world of shadowy multinational banking puts him in contact with an ever-expanding anti-corruption investigation carried out by Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke. Their paths will lead them to the heart of a political/financial intrigue, which will rock the foundations of Europe and the French government itself.
Driss and Manuel both grew up on the same council estate. An estate where the sense of belonging to your patch is much stronger than the sense of belonging to a country, a nation or a culture... Manuel has assimilated this belonging, and he has even benefited from it and built his life on it. Driss, meanwhile, has shunned it. They will both have to face up to the consequences of their decisions – because they will each have a price to pay…
In a Parisian parking lot Sonia finds herself trapped in her car with her son and the daughter of her boyfriend Fred, who has been left outside, powerless to deal with the situation: an anti-tank mine has been set under the car. Sonia is a bomb-disposal expert, who works for a NGO with Fred. She just got back from a mission in Ukraine and, while she's used to face dangerous situations, with the children's lives on the line the stakes have never been higher. Along with colleagues Igor and Camille, who came to the rescue, Sonia and Fred have 30 minutes to defuse the bomb and work out who could be the mastermind behind this. Will they stand united until the end or will the family implode under pressure?
Antoine and Olga, a French couple, have been living in a small village in Galicia for a long time. They practice eco-responsible agriculture and restore abandoned houses to facilitate repopulation. Everything should be idyllic except for their opposition to a wind turbine project that creates a serious conflict with their neighbors. The tension will rise to the point of irreparability.
Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.
One night, Leo, a Spaniard working in Brussels as a subway driver, sees a young man on the edge of the platform, just before he falls onto the tracks.
All begins in a rundown bar outside of Paris where a regular man realizes he has a winning lottery ticket only to be shot in a crime that needs to be quickly covered up.
A social services investigator helps a local sheriff solve the brutal murder of a beautiful blonde known only as The White Orchid.
Two thieves, Hugo Sennart and Yan Kuq, wanted by the same police inspector, cross paths by chance.
Owing to his alleged involvement with communist parties, film director David Merrill is forbidden from working in Hollywood. He decides to fight for his rights and faces numerous challenges.
Will arrives for his last year at Military Academy, in the Deep South USA, in the 1960's. A black student, Pearce, has been accepted, for the first time and Will is asked to keep an eye out for the inevitable racism. The racists come in the form of The Ten, a secret group of the elite students. They want Pearce to leave on his own free will, but are prepared to torture him to make it 'his free will'. Will is forced to help Pearce and he is prepared to risk his own career to do so.
Set in France during the struggle for Algerian independence, Messaoud's mother is terminally ill and his father, needing to work long hours in the factory, can't look after him, so decides to put him and his older brother Abdel in foster care. Sent to the countryside, Abdel has to work on a farm, but Messaoud is taken in by a childless woman, who conceals his Arab origins from her fiercely Gaullist ex-army husband. Re-named Michel/Michou, and with his hair comically dyed blond, the young boy quickly steals the hearts of both foster-parents, and eventually is instrumental in saving their troubled marriage.
