40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.
A pioneering post-war female film director, an instigator of the New Wave who was honored by Hollywood in her own lifetime, Agnès Varda has become a source of inspiration for a whole new generation of young filmmakers. With movies like Cléo de 5 à 7, Le Bonheur, Sans toit ni loi, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, she created a quirky, open to the world, sensitive to the disenfranchised, often silly body of work. Always one finger on the pulse, she shook everything up, including cinema itself which she refused to constrict to pure fiction or long-form films.
In January 1960, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, one of the most famous star couples of the day, were on tour in the United States. Yves Montand had just triumphed on the country's biggest stages. Simone Signoret, who had distinguished herself in "Room at the Top", was about to win an Oscar. It was then that they met Arthur Miller, a writer and playwright but above all, at the time, the husband of Marilyn Monroe, a world star at the height of her fame and beauty. Yves Montand and Marilyn Monroe fell in love and the actress did everything she could to make a film with the Frenchman. This is how they met on the set of the film "Let's Make Love".
Thirteen European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo; what this city has represented in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo stands for today in Europe. These eminent filmmakers of different generations and origins offer exceptional singular styles and visions.
A fascinating insight into the role of the intimacy co-ordinator, told through behind-the-scenes access to new queer French TV show Split.
In "Gone with the Wind" she was an unforgettable Scarlett O'Hara. Beauty, two-time Oscar winner, celebrated Hollywood star and great Shakespearean interpreter - Vivien Leigh was all that. Behind the celebrity, however, was a fragile person. Her bipolar disorder clouded her success and her private happiness.
Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living novelist, turns 80 on March 19. In 1959, his collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, put him on the map, and 10 years later his hilarious, ribald best-seller, Portnoy’s Complaint, gave rise to the first of many Roth-related controversies in which Judaism, sex, the role of women, and the parent-child relationship would take center stage. In candid interviews, the Pulitzer Prize-winner discusses his distinctly unliterary upbringing in Newark, NJ, his admiration for Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, and how Zuckerman may or may not be his alter-ego. Nathan Englander, Mia Farrow, Jonathan Franzen, and Martin Garbus are among those who talk about the man and his writing. Franzen in particular praises Roth for “how brave he must have been to have methodically offended everybody and to have exposed parts of himself no one had ever exposed before.”
Portugal managed to get through all of World War II without firing a single shot. Caught in a vise between the Axis and the Allies, Antonio Salazar, the country’s strongman, used every trick in the book to get his country through unscathed. In this war of nerves in which anything went, the Portuguese dictator took brilliant advantage of the only weapon available to maintain his country’s independence: neutrality.
In February 1917, Imperial Russia plunges into revolution. Nine months of unrest before a coup brought about an upheaval that changed the course of history and profoundly altered the future of civilisation.
Umberto Eco, the author of best-selling novels who passed away in February 2016, unveils the secrets behind his undertakings and novels.
This was a very human account of the lives and deaths of Marie Antoinette and Louis the XVI focusing primarily on Marie. It is an account of their lives from birth to death and the circumstances leading to the downfall of the French monarchy.
In a totalitarian future, in a nightmare metropolis, inhabited only by criminals and police, Erik Lonnrot, a gifted detective, investigates a series of strange murders and disappearances that seem to implicate a insane crime lord. (Re-released in 1996 as a feature film, 86 minutes.)
What happened in France just after WWII, between 1945 and 1949? An interesting historic documentary looks at the fate of male and female (presumed) collaborators with the Nazis, the use of the POW in the reconstruction of the plundered and devastated country.
Recent scandals have revealed the brutal methods often imposed on young top athletes. Fueled by numerous testimonies, this damning investigation reveals the workings of a system which sacrifices children in the name of economic interests and glory.
A old red riding hood, badly crippled after killing a monster many years ago, comes up with a sinister plan to dance again.
A man is caught in a storm of public rage when a 16-year-old girl mounts a social media campaign accusing him of murdering her father.
