Paris Underground

La Toilette des pensées

Women (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind.

Lutèce, sur les traces des Parisii

Ulrike Ottinger weaves her personal memories of Parisian bohemianism and the serious social, political and cultural upheavals of the time into a cinematic “figure poem.”

Bienheureuses : La véritable histoire des Carmélites martyres de Compiègne

Louzine is a place uniting several music styles and several destinies. Men and women work there, who have come together because they master music instruments and have almost all had the same type of life: exile. Louzine is a mecca for tolerance concerning music. Gnawa music plays with rock and blues, chaâbi (traditional from Algiers) is on familiar terms with jazz, Kabyle music dances with Celtic sounds. This is where groups like Orchestre National de Barbès, Zerda, Thalweg, Gaâda, Cheikh Sidi Bémol could develop, thanks to such fecund diversity in which Breton bagpipes and North African qarqabous joyfully mingle, and free improvisation mixes with unchanging traditional chorus. All songs, be they in Arabic, Kabyle, French or English, tell about home, about love, hope, immigration, daily life, and are often full of humour.

An investigation into the deaths of La Commune, victims whose bodies were left unburied and have been desecrated daily for 120 years.

Joseph Zobel, l'Enfant de la Rue Cases-Nègres

Saïd et Misbah ou l'enfance partagée

At the beginning of the 20th century, two major colonial exhibitions took place in the Bois de Vincennes near Paris. Today only a few silent ruins remain.

Released on March 16th, 1919. Produced by Burton Holmes.

Four experienced mountaineers climb the three floors of the Eiffel Tower through the pillars of the building. A police officer, overwhelmed by the events, does not succeed in arresting the intrepid who reach the summit with agility under the stunned eyes of tourists. They then abseil and happily throw themselves into the Seine to celebrate the feat.

Lisa à Paris

Footage of the Paris Carnival of 1897. Shot with the Cinématographe Joly-Normandin

Released on July 20th, 1919.

A documentary on the 1924 Olympic Game in Paris.

Seule la danse, dernière année au conservatoire

Travelogue produced by Burton Holmes. Released on September 7th, 1919.

Paris, for once, not chic and prim, but raunchy, kinky, and uncompromising: This documentary explores a subculture in which fetish, BDSM, techno, and performance art came together around the turn of the millennium to form a distinct way of life in the French capital.

Shot with the Cinématographe Joly-Normandin