Contre vents et marées

Enfants d’octobre

Mourir à Charonne, pourquoi ?

17.10.61

On October 17, 1961, in response to the curfew imposed on Muslim Algerians by Paris police prefect Maurice Papon, the FLN Federation of France organized a peaceful demonstration in the streets of the capital. The demonstration turned into a bloody crackdown: unprecedented violence, thousands of arrests, hundreds missing, and dozens dead. Today, much is known about the violence of that night: at least 200 Algerians were killed, beheaded, beaten, or thrown into the Seine; 11,500 others were arrested and often tortured. Hundreds were deported back to Algeria. Long silenced, the repression has been acknowledged thanks to the work of remembrance and eyewitness accounts.

Interview film with the protagonists of the New German Cinema in 1966.

Dramatic Universal newsreel footage of the Hindenburg disaster which took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, when the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers, 61 crew), there were 35 fatalities; there was also one death among the ground crew. The actual cause of the fire remains unknown, although a variety of hypotheses have been put forward for both the cause of ignition and the initial fuel for the ensuing fire. The incident shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying rigid airship and marked the end of the airship era.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Electro-Pythagorus is an intimate and subjective portrait of the late Martin Bartlett, the Canadian electronic music pioneer who studied with Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, John Cage, and Pandit Pran Nath. His contribution as an interdisciplinary composer, educator, and founding member of Western Front, though undoubtedly extensive, is in danger of being erased from cultural memory since his death from AIDS in 1993. Navigating an array of archival materials including letters, correspondences, notebooks, personal photos, and a huge body of unreleased music and field recordings held at the archives of Simon Fraser University, Electro-Pythagoras is a journey through the evolution of Bartlett’s musical time and space, softly guided by Luke Fowler’s insightful camera and montage—creating an experimental portrait that defies one-dimensionality.

The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.

A film about a woman who doesn’t exist. Moroccan Hind was raped and consequently denied an official identity – she has no other choice but to work as a prostitute and traditional wedding dancer, but despite the odds of her situation, refuses to give up her dream of dignity, motherhood and love. This is a story of modern day outlaws, children of prostitutes, abandoned child brides and those who have had to escape to the fringes of patriarchal Moroccan society. Through the eyes of one young woman we see a life of constant struggle, but also a life free of the society’s norms and boundaries. The woman in the centre of the film, Hind, is both vulnerable and courageous as she tries to regain her life, her children and her mere right to live as an equal human being in the 21st century.

It never occurred to Syrian filmmaker Nidal Hassan and Lilibeth Rasmussen (Danish artist) that the day of their arrival to Damascus - March 16, 2011 - would be the day preceding the announcement of the uprising in Syria. Between Damascus, Sweida and Ein Al Arab, the film tries to gather details of stories of absent women and other women who would present their own testimonies about themselves and about love, life, death and sometimes about the revolution. Difficult months go by, friends disappear unwillingly in jails, and friends leave forcefully… and a longing to freedom, dignity and justice for which Syrians have conferred a lot of blood. Nidal moves around with his camera in attempt to record Syrians' daily journals subjected to pain, oppression, blood and hope. Between Damascus and Copenhagen, two filmmakers from two different cultures try to tell real stories of love, life and death in the age of the revolution.

Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!

Galapagos

Elles prennent la parole

Erratic, erotic, arrhythmic lunar trauma. Strong poetic textures of female psycho-sexual experience, altering the film’s surface through selective bleaching and scratching, and uncanny percussive editing.

A propaganda documentary on Sino-France Diplomatic Relations, started from the stories behind 1958 film “The Magic of the Kite”.

Part of a long-term project of the same name, Oriental Silk is about touch and tactility, craft and value, and the colors of memory. The Oriental Silk emporium, located in Los Angeles, was the first Chinese silk importing business in the United States after WWII. Established more than four decades ago, the shop, which has risen alongside the Hollywood film industry, becomes a productive place to reflect on the astonishing histories of twentieth-century migration and to critique the idea of the American Dream. Through the worldview of the shop owner Kenneth Wong, the beauty of silk and its wondrous craftsmanship stand for the human pursuits that link people and places—and provide purpose—across time and borders.

A rare 1963 documentary on the life of Norma Jean Baker, who would soon and forever be remembered as Marilyn Monroe.

Documentary film on the plight of Western Australia's forests and their real value in drawing down and storing carbon.

Planète animale 2 : Survivre