Égouts de Paris : L'Envers de la Ville Lumière(2020)

Vivants(fr)

Dora Maar in Spite of Picasso(es)

Dora Maar, a world-class photographer who began her artistic career in the French Surrealist scene of the 30s, lived in the shadow of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, her lover between 1935 and 1943, with whom she maintained a chaotic, even violent, relationship. Fortunately, she survived Picasso's abusive behavior and its sequels to find a new path, the best one, the one that is worth to be told, in spite of Picasso.

Vu générale de l'Exposition prise du Trocadéro(fr)

The 1900 Paris World's Fair as seen from Trocadéro.

Le Musée et le Milliardaire anticonformiste(fr)

Scream(en)

An experimental essay film about terrorism, media, violence and globalisation. Three infotainment news broadcasts - a rollercoaster, a hijacking, and an influencer - are soundtracked by pulsating experimental electronics that push the psychic residue of a post war-on-terror world out of the unconscious and onto the screen. Capitalism, imperialism, desire; all three are implicated in a nihilism that has seeped from the news into the social psyche.

Merci Zaza - La folle histoire de la Cage aux Folles(fr)

A look back at "La Cage aux Folles", which ran non-stop for five years, from February 1973, on the stage of the Théâtre du Palais Royal in Paris. At a time when homosexuality was considered a crime by the law, Poiret and Serrault achieved great success in boulevard theater. Their success continued on the silver screen, with three Oscar nominations and a Broadway musical. Combining never-before-seen archives from the play, extracts from the film, confessions by Poiret and Serrault, and interviews with witnesses, this is the story of a wild epic.

Palace of Electricity(en)

A panoramic shot, making a full circle, at the 1900 Paris Exposition. It begins and ends looking at the front of the Palace of Electricity. As it pans, first we see a workman hosing down the promenade. Men and women walk past, all wearing hats. We see the base of the Eiffel Tower, which the Palace faces. A couple strolls. A mother and daughter walk passed, father is slightly ahead wearing a boater. Three men in uniform walk toward the camera as it comes to a stop facing the Palace.

Panorama of Eiffel Tower(en)

“Showing the entire height of this wonderful structure from the base of the dome and return, with the great Paris Exposition in the background, looking down Champs de Mars. A most realistic picture.” According to Edison film historian Charles Musser, this film features the first camera tilt among the company's surviving oeuvre.

The Underground Orchestra(fr)

A moving documentary. The life stories told by immigrants in Paris are often saddening. The hardships they went through and their current uncertainty and difficult situation. No residence permit, fear of the gendarmerie, little money, poor housing. The quality and background of the musicians is many times amazing.

Rose, c'est Paris(fr)

Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly's Rose, c'est Paris is both a photographic monograph and a feature-length film. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but interlocking and complementary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and writer Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen manipulation, obsession, fetish, and seething desire.

Scene from the Elevator Ascending Eiffel Tower(en)

“A marvelously clear picture taken from the top of the elevator of the Eiffel Tower during going up and coming down of the car. This wonderful tower is 1,000 feet in height, and the picture produces a most sensational effect. As the camera leaves the ground and rises to the top of the tower, the enormous white city opens out to the view of the astonished spectator. Arriving at the top of the tower, a bird's eye view of the Exposition looking toward the Trocadero, and also toward the Palace of Electricity, is made, and the camera begins its descent. The entire trip is shown on a 200-foot film. 30.00. We furnish the ascent in 125 foot film.” (Edison film catalog)

Études sur Paris(fr)

"Paris, Paris, you know, I would eat it..." wrote André Sauvage. An artist close to the avant-gardes, André Sauvage composed the first great filmed portrait of Paris. Its ambitious symphony of a big city marries, on the music composed by Jeff Mills, the changing rhythm of the Belle Époque. Contemporary of the dizzying explorations of Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann, Sauvage is less fascinated by speed than by the repertoire of urban mobility, attentive to the neighborhoods he crosses, always curious about their furtive inhabitants. He draws a portrait of Paris in five studies: Paris-Port, North-South, the islands of Paris, the Little Belt and from the Saint-Jacques tower to the Sainte-Geneviève mountain.

Movement Studies in Paris(fr)

A study of traffic movement in Paris.

Swans ‎– A Long Slow Screw.(en)

Features live footage from the Greed/Holy Money tour in 1986 in London and Nottingham and the A Long Slow Screw video.

Chasing the Touge: The Story of Canyon Racing in America(en)

Chasing the Touge takes you inside the world of canyon racing where adrenaline junkies race through the "touge," or mountain passes, pushing their cars and driving abilities to the limit. Follow drifters, rally racers, and tuners who run the canyons as they aspire to break into the world of professional motorsports. Experience the sights and sounds of pushing triple digits downhill on twisty mountain roads and get a taste of why these people risk their lives running the touge. From midnight runs to drifting and rally racing, Chasing The Touge holds nothing back. It is all about you vs. the mountain. How far can you push it without going over the edge?

Panorama des rives de la Seine à Paris, III(fr)

Panorama film shot floating down the Seine.

Water(bo)

A Tibetan woman collects water near her family's yak farm and brings it back home 80-pounds full, in a ritual that takes her an hour to complete. A selection from Peabody Award-winning documentarian Bari Pearlman’s Nangchen Shorts series.

Inside Gosha Rubchinskiy’s Post-Soviet Generation(en)

This is the first generation of Russian youth to have grown up after the fall of the Soviet Union, and are looking inwards to the Eastern Bloc for inspiration, rather than the wider Western world. With designers like Gosha Rubchinskiy popularising post-Soviet style around the world, we discover what effect the former Soviet Union has had on modern creativity, the impact of this cultural explosion on the rest of the world, and what it is to be young in Russia today.

Careless Reef part 2: Abu Kiffan(en)

Abu Kiffan is the name of a reef near Safaga in Egypt. In the film we are drowned in sound, time slows down and we are given a closer look at what’s going on. Part two of Holthuis’ series Careless Reef, four films about the world under water.

An Opera for an Empire(fr)

The amazing and epic story of how the Paris Opera House, the Palais Garnier, was built from 1852 to 1870, thanks to the decisive impulse of the French Emperor Napoleon III; a story that is also that of the birth of a golden age for orchestral music, opera and ballet; of the rise of the urban bourgeoisie turned social elite; and of a certain mysterious inhabitant of the darkest corners of a legendary place.