Lust for Life

In this 2025 selection from Chantier des Francos, we shine the spotlight on Jeanne Bonjour. A singer, songwriter, and performer from Rennes, Jeanne Bonjour stands out for her boundless energy and her danceable yet melancholic style. Having made her breakthrough with her first EP, 13 ans (2021), she has already performed at prestigious venues such as Printemps de Bourges, Trans Musicales, We Love Green, and MaMA.

This fascinating and retrospective look at the music of the outspoken and multitalented Lydia Lunch represents every stage of her varied career, with featured songs such as "I Woke Up Screaming" from her Teenage Jesus and the Jerks days. Other songs spanning the decades in this collection include "Freud in Flop," "Sorry for Behaving So Badly," "Dead River," "Solo Mystico," "Summon," "Violence Is the Sport of God" and many more.

A concert film by Bárbara Tinoco, filmed live at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. Bárbara Tinoco is the youngest Portuguese artist to sell out the country’s largest arena, taking the stage with a magical, theatrical, but also very moving show.

In April 2008, LRS toured across the USA and met some amazing female noise artists. This is what it is like to be a girl of noise.

How Cardi B became a household name and a legend in her own time.

All too often, every great female rock musician has to answer a predictable question - what is it like being a girl in a band? For many, the sight of a girl shredding a guitar or laying into the drums is still a bit of a novelty. As soon as women started forming their own bands they were given labels - the rock chick, the girl band or one half of the rock 'n' roll couple. Kate Mossman aims to look beyond the cliches of fallen angels, grunge babes and rock chicks as she gets the untold stories from rock's frontline to discover if it has always been different for the girl in a band.

Profile of choreographer, composer and performer Meredith Monk, recorded on location in her home base, New York City. Monk discusses some ideas underlying her work: her attraction to the eloquence of the human voice, and the direct communication made possible by the abstract qualities of music; her emphasis on the poetic rather than the political; her belief in the power of images; her willingness to take risks. She describes her experiences in working in different media, such as audio recordings, films, and videos, and the challenge of weaving them together.

A celebration of music and rallying cry that takes viewers on a journey across generations, eras, and genres, anchored by a female chorus of musical icons, whose songs, voices, and activism provided inspiration for the past and current fight for equality for all.

Four friends search for love and happiness while working at a California sandwich shop.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

An eager young artist receives a disturbing introduction to the art world during the delivery of a controversial sculpture.

Follows three young millennials as they form a wholehearted ménage à trois, each of them going through a moment of transition: Fun-loving Marcello from under the thumb of his Italian soap star father, soulful French-Iranian actor Nassim toward a more fulfilling career, and artist Christine through the grief following the death of her grandfather. The trio finds joy together by joining political protests, making art, and falling deeper into their unconventional love, until Marcello must return to Italy.

Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.

A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

A journey into the hearts, minds and eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Frida Kahlo - three of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists.

An art student faces an art block while deadlines are getting closer. Through her frustration, she's going to dive into the psychological issues that threaten her work.

Frida Kahlo began to paint in 1925 while recovering from a streetcar accident that left her permanently disabled. Many of her 200 paintings directly relate to her experiences with physical pain. They also chronicle her turbulent relationship with artist Diego Rivera. Today Kahlo's work is critically and monetarily as prized as that of her male peers, sometimes more so.

A witness to a mob assassination flees for her life from town to town, switching identities, but cannot seem to elude Milo, the chief killer out to get her.

56-year-old artist Mindy Alper has suffered severe depression and anxiety for most of her life. For a time she even lost the power of speech, and it was during this period that her drawings became extraordinarily articulate.

Joan Mitchell, une femme dans l'abstraction