Good Morning, Mr. Orwell

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell 1984

8.10

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).

1984

An All Round Maid

An All Round Maid 1981

6.00

A video derived from footage Godard kept from his 1981 visit to Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios at the time he was making Passion.

1981

L'Imprésario

L'Imprésario 2010

1.00

In the fall of 2010, Bozon and co-conspirator Pascale Bodet commandeered the first floor of Paris’s famed Centre Pompidou for 10 days of screenings, lectures and performances that amounted to a counter-canonical history of French cinema. During the ensuing merriment (entitled Beaubourg, la dernière Major !) audience members were invited to observe the daily making of this film, directed by Bozon and written by Axelle Ropert, about an inexperienced young journalist (Laure Marsac) sent to the Pompidou to interview a maverick artistic impresario (Thomas Chabrol). The result is an unexpected love story that is also a record of this landmark exhibition, featuring cameos by Raul Ruiz, Paul Vecchiali, Luc Moullet and more !

2010

Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders 1980

6.40

A man awakens to find himself immersed in a real-life scenario of a board game with an ever expanding cartography.

1980

Picasso, Braque & Cie - The Cubist Revolution

Picasso, Braque & Cie - The Cubist Revolution 2018

8.75

In 1906, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were 24 and 25 years old. The Butte Montmartre is their Parisian sanctuary where artists in need of recognition meet. Braque and Picasso become friends to the point of never leaving each other. For the moment, their paintings do not interest many people; only Apollinaire, then aged 26, and the young gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 22, saw immense potential in them. And in addition to their passion for painting, these four inseparable boys share the same appetite for modernity. Collages, diversions of materials and geometrization of forms: cubism opened the way to abstraction. A revolution initiated by Picasso and Braque, which profoundly changed the course of the history of modern art.

2018

New Old

New Old 1979

6.20

"Chronicles of the Present Times" - An experimental trilogy. New Old flows together footage from more than a decade of his wandering between scenes, sets, and drugs, an accelerated world tour through various iterations of the counterculture.

1979

Stones and Flies: Richard Long in the Sahara

Stones and Flies: Richard Long in the Sahara 1988

10.00

In the fall of 1987, Philippe Haas accompanied the sculptor Richard Long to the Algerian Sahara and filmed him tracing with his feet, or constructing with desert stones, simple geometric figures (straight lines, circles, spirals). In counterpoint to the images, Richard Long explains his approach. Since 1967, Richard Long (1945, Bristol), who belongs to the land art movement, has traveled the world on foot and installed, in places often inaccessible to the public, stones, sticks and driftwood found in situ. His ephemeral works are reproduced through photography. He thus made walking an art, and land art an aspiration of modern man for solitude in nature.

1988

Ballet aquatique

Ballet aquatique 2012

5.50

In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Why it is so difficult to count fish in an aquarium? Ruiz, his loyal actor Melvil Poupaud and his producer François Margolin come up with a wide range of hypotheses. With their bone-dry wit, they keep up the tradition of the French pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. (IFFR)

2012

La Loi du collège

La Loi du collège 1994

6.00

In this documentary, director Mariana Otero looks at the daily life of a college in the "difficult" commune of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris.

1994

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y 1997

6.90

An acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9/11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960s and '70s. By the 1990s, such characters were apparently no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of anonymous bombs in suitcases. Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster.

1997

Where Do You Stand, Tsai Ming-liang?

Where Do You Stand, Tsai Ming-liang? 2022

1

"For reasons of health, Lee Kang-sheng and I moved to the mountains. We don't have any neighbors. Our house is part of a row of dilapidated houses. I love these abandoned houses. I often walk around in them casually. I think they are beautiful. I said to Lee Kang-sheng: we don't have to go elsewhere to make films anymore. I'll make all my remaining films right here. I got some old chairs and some of my paintings and arranged them in these abandoned houses. And thus, this film was made." Tsai Ming-liang

2022

The True Story of Artaud the Momo

The True Story of Artaud the Momo 1994

8.00

While researching their subject’s life for their feature My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud, co-directors/writers Gerard Mordillat and Jerome Prieur made a documentary on the famed French actor/writer/poet that died in 1948 at the age of 51.

1994

Quartier Lacan

Quartier Lacan 2001

1

A documentary about Jacques Lacan and his influence on the main tendencies of modern psychoanalysis. It begins with a series of interviews with psychoanalysts who knew Lacan, and then presents an overview of Lacanian theory and practice that explores what actually happens in psychoanalysis.

2001

Suzanne Valadon, peintre sans concession

Suzanne Valadon, peintre sans concession 2025

6.00

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) did not seem destined for a life as an artist. Born in 1865 as the daughter of a single washerwoman and mother herself at the age of 18 - to the future painter Maurice Utrillo - her fate could have been sealed. But Valadon broke with the conventions of her time in order to follow her artistic creative urge. The Centre Pompidou in Paris paid tribute to the artist's work with an exhibition in 2023, which traces her special life and extraordinary modernity in a film documentary. Archive material, interviews and animations provide an insight into her career, which is characterized by encounters and friendships with other great artists of her time.

2025

The Matchstick Men

The Matchstick Men 1996

1

Documentary about the life and work of the Hungarian composer, Gyorgy Kurtag

1996