L Entrée De Service

1938, France, Paris, at the Superior Conservatory of Dramatic Art ("Conservatoire Supérieur d'Art Dramatique"). The first-year entrance exams are in full swing. Many applicants, few accepted. Isabelle (Janine Darcey) is one of the few chosen. She joins former students from the second and third years, including François (Claude Dauphin) and Cécilia (Odette Joyeux). They attend the drama class run by Professor Lambertin (Louis Jouvet). The young people, passionate and eager to become comedians, clash in tumultuous love affairs, because by dint of acting, they imagine that life is a farce. François, for example, is in love with Isabelle, who also loves him, but is pursued by Cecilia, his former mistress... "Put art in your life and life in your art!"

A view of the entrance to the Stockholmsutställlningen, the World Exhibition in Stockholm.

The beginnings of Chantal Akerman behind the camera at the ages of 17 and 18: four films shot in Super 8 during the summer, presented to enter the National Higher Institute of Performing Arts and Broadcasting Techniques (INSAS, Brussels) in September 1967, where she was accepted

You'll see Johnny Rotten or rather his ghost Johnny Lyndon insulting human herd with "this is religion, your religion". The last images of a film which lets you no escape, no more escape than the punkette who exhibits her genitals in a toilet hallway, no more escape than all these rockstars who belch to fill the void. On the music aspect, there is a combinatorial saturation of sounds that looks like a requiem. The images : uninterrupted movement un a daily apocalyptic space. This is about savagery, frantic intoxication, suicidal energy.

Static shot of the traffic at Hyde Park Corner, London.

Sovereign Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna and President Félix Faure, walking by, followed by their respective escorts.

Actuality film of miners entering a mine.

A tragic, yet inspiring love story between a young actress and young filmmaker, whose relationship blurs the line between what transpires within the movie screen versus in reality, pushing their artistic endeavor to the brink as they try to create something worthwhile together.

Two Senegalese men walk through a forest in Morocco at night. As they try to find a passageway to the north, they talk about a strange dream. Two officers from the Spanish Civil Guard patrol the Spanish coast in an SUV. The car's headlights probe the darkness in search of illegal immigrants. In Paris, a young woman performs a symbolic burial in a forest on the edge of the city.

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

A young Belgian girl, raised by her longtime nanny, flees Europe at the advent of World War I and travels to America to find her real mother.

Heiress Hedda Nillson certain that her family is about to lose all its money, takes a job as a maid. After the usual trials and tribulations, Hedda falls in love with humble chauffeur Eric Landstrom.

While the crowd slowly moves forward, a company of guards and the Imperial dais enter the church.

On marrying the boss's daughter, Richard takes his father-in-law's advice to hire a live-in domestic. He soon finds good help is hard to come by. Run-ins follow with dipsomaniacs, bank robbers, a Welsh lass who takes one look at London and runs, and an Italian charmer who turns the place into a bawdy house. Then when Ingrid arrives from Sweden things actually start to get complicated.

That wascawwy wabbit is chased into a theatre by Elmer Fudd, and ends up having to perform to save himself, as well as convince Elmer to act himself. The vaudeville industry was never this wacky!