Antonin Artaud

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.

One of the most popular melodrama films directed by Abel Gance. A paranoide, fanatical and obsessively jealous husband obducts his own son to bully his wife.

The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.

Valerian writes his uncle, colonial millionaire, for money. He meets a quartermaster, Napoleon, who pretends to be a doctor of law. They become friends.

Two sisters struggle to stay on the straight and narrow.

A visitor from the western front tells young children, in a sober commentary, about the battle of Verdun.

In 1842, during the conquest of Algeria Sidonie Panache disguised as a Soave runs away with her lover who is doing his military service there.

French silent film pioneer Abel Gance directs this 1935 classic about Lucrezia Borgia, her brother, Cesare. and her father, Pope Alexander VI -- one of history's most ruthless and ambitious crime families.

The French-language version of the The Threepenny Opera with a different cast from the German version.

During a trip to Naples, a young French man falls in love with a fisherman's granddaughter, Graziella. They are separated when he must return to France, and Graziella soon dies.

Hardly one of French filmmaker Abel Gance's masterpieces, The Torture of Silence nevertheless has more dramatic and psychological value than your average romantic-triangle tale. Simply put, the film concerns a doctor, his wife, and his brother. The doctor, a specialist in pediatrics, has no time for his wife Marthe. She seeks solace in the arms of his brother. Unable to keep up the charade, Marthe attempts to shoot herself, but it is her lover who is mortally wounded.

Mathusalem (or Methuselah) is a 1922 play by Ivan Goll, considered a precursor of the theater of the absurd. The 1927 run of the play saw five sequences-- some of Jean Painlevé's earliest film work-- projected against a backdrop of white clouds.

Tarakanova is a 1930 French historical drama film directed by Raymond Bernard and starring Édith Jéhanne, Paule Andral and Olaf Fjord. It depicts the life of Princess Tarakanoff, the pretender to the throne of Catherine II in Eighteenth Century Russia.

Disorder Is 20 Years Old

An experimental short from 1923 France which offers silent narrative in diverse, optical multi-exposures and severe close-ups offering dense montages which create psychological constructs that unfold a Parisian love affair which turns into a threesome of great emotion and consequences. Also notable for using Antonin Artaud as the male lead.

Koenigsmark is a 1935 British-French drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur and starring Elissa Landi, John Lodge and Pierre Fresnay. The film is based on the novel Koenigsmark by Pierre Benoît. It's sets were designed by the art director Lucien Aguettand. The film was known in the United States as Crimson Dynasty.

Based on Charles Cunat's novel, Surcouf tells a romanticized version of the life story of Robert Surcouf, a French privateer and slave trader who operated in the Indian Ocean from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century.

Abel Gance's 1971 sound edition of his epic 1927 'Napoleon', which contains much of the silent original, with new material shot and added in both 1965 and 1971, and with sound synchronization from both the 1932 reissue and this version.

Adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, the film portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.

Guilty of insulting Christ Ahasverus became forever eternity the wandering Jew. On 13 February 1682, during a night of pogrom in the Warsaw ghetto a Frenchman married to a Polish Jew is assassinated by members of a secret society.

A lieutenant of the French navy, ready to kill himself in despair, renounced his project after spending a night with a beautiful stranger. He ends up finding her, the heiress princess Lystrie. The German version (Königin einer Nacht) was an operetta, the Italian version (La donna di una notte) was a comedy, while the French version (La Femme d'une nuit) was a dramatic film.

Two women love the same man in a world of few prospects. In Budapest, Liliom is a "public figure," a rascal who's a carousel barker, loved by the experienced merry-go-round owner and by a young, innocent maid. The maid, Julie, loses her job after going out with Liliom; he's fired by his jealous employer for going out with Julie. The two lovers move in with Julie's aunt; unemployment emasculates him and a local weasel tempts him with crime. Julie, now wan, is true to Liliom even in his bad temper. Meanwhile, a stolid widower, a carpenter, wants to marry Julie. Is there any future on this earth for Julie and Liliom, whose love is passionate rather than ideal?

Émile en ce miroir

A seance in which Antonin Artaud can be seen as a swirling depiction of a theater of freedom in the rubble of the hateful counter between actor and audience. Percival is the author of many books in Swedish and English. He has exhibited his paintings and photographs, composed experimental world music and directed some of his own plays and a play by Beckett.

A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.

A dramatized re-enactment and documentary of the Battle of Verdun as seen by both French and German soldiers, shot on site of the actual battle.

A short silent documentary on the making of the 1931 Abel Gance directed film, "La Fin du Monde".