Vie

Portrait of Julia Jean Turner, from her childhood to her rise of fame as Lana Turner, to her last role.

Mise-en-scène, at the Comédie-Française, of La Vie de Galilée by Bertolt Brecht. This is the last staging by Antoine Vitez.

This is, for 1906, a strikingly ambitious prototype-documentary travelogue filmed in and around the cities now called Kolkata and Mumbai. It's full of precious, occasionally startling images, from an extended 'phantom ride' down busy Calcutta streets to thronging port life, street trading, even the cremation of a human body and the ritual decapitation of lambs on a Bombay street – a scene some viewers may find upsetting. This is a French production but, like many of the 'exotic' travel films so popular in early cinema, it travelled widely itself – hence this version, with English language intertitles.

Erika Blanc self-reflectively narrates her descent into Italian genre cinema while she hyperbolically playacts in the woods.

Four young friends share the carefree, cheerfulness, laughter and dances of Bohemian life. Rodolphe the painter, Alexandre Chaunard the composer, Colline the philosopher, as well as Marcel and his friend Musette. Mimi, a romantic young girl, falls in love with Rodolphe.

Having left the family home when they came of age following a violent dispute with their father, three members of the same siblings decide, 25 years later, to return to their native village. It is while returning to the traces of their childhood that heavy secrets of the past resurface.

Documentary filmmaker Védrès' first semi-fictional feature was released in France in 1949 as La Vie Commence Demain. The film made it to the U.S. in 1952 as Life Begins Tomorrow. Made in cooperation with UNESCO, the film speculates on the future of mankind after the advent of Atomic Energy. Many prominent French artists and intellects contribute to the narration: Jean-Pierre Aumont plays The Man of Today, Andre Labarthe is the Man of Tomorrow, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Daniel Agache, Jean Rostand, Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso and Andre Gide are respectively seen as "The Existentialist," "The Psychiatrist,' "The Biologist," "The Architect," "The Artist" and "The Author". Film clips of hospitals, schoolrooms, scientific laboratories, and even nightclubs are woven into Védrès' fascinating tapestry.

In Brussels, the Iranian artist and film director Vida Dena meets Naseem, father of a Syrian family who fled from the war. Within the walls of their precarious home, she talks with Hala and Rima, his two eldest daughters, through drawings. The little bits of coloured paper come to life on the screen to relate the memories, dreams and destiny of this family in exile.

A documentary showing the proceedings around a French castle, turned luxury hotel, over a year.

Melanie can't stand her life anymore, a source of too much suffering. One day she decides to end it all and sets off in a stolen car on a suicidal race on the highway. But at a gas station, a somewhat eccentric old woman discreetly slips into the vehicle. Garance has a habit of randomly taking a seat in other people's cars, with only her suitcase and a binder bearing the title "The Flight Ceremony of the Northern Gannet". Melanie's suicidal plans are thwarted by this nuisance, whom she does not hesitate to inveigh against. But anger soon gives way to affection.

Mimi, an orphan, is taken in by a drunken innkeeper and becomes a domestic. She meets Rudolphe, scion of a well-to-do family, who rescues her from the unwanted advances of a drunken hotel guest. They fall madly in love, but Rudolphe's uncle, M. Durandin, wants Rudolphe to marry a family friend, Madame de Rouvre, and writes Mimi a letter, telling her that she is ruining Rudolphe's life. Musette and Marcel, friends of Mimi, also try to break up the romance by introducing Mimi to other men, and Rudolphe becomes jealous and leaves her. Brokenhearted, Mimi declines in health and eventually throws herself into the river but is rescued and taken to the hospital. Realizing it is only a matter of time before she dies, she drags herself back to the room where she and Rudolphe were happiest. Rudolphe is there and she dies knowing that he loves her.

"La Vie au Bout des Doigts" is a documentary film by Jean-Paul Janssen released in 1982, directing Patrick Edlinger totally living his passion, climbing, which he practices here solo ("with bare hands"), it that is, without a rope or any kind of insurance. The film begins with a session of solo sea crossings on the Piade site near Toulon. In the second part, Patrick Edlinger trains in Buoux before carving a solo route in this now famous climbing site. This mythical film in more than one way is considered the first climbing film, that is to say where climbing is an activity in itself and not a means of preparing for mountaineering. His media success was such that he propelled Patrick Edlinger to the rank of world star, and above all he made climbing known to the general public, and was even nominated for the César for best documentary short film.

Third release in the series 'La vie de N.S. Jésus-Christ' (1914).

When Abou from Mali finally made it to Europe, it felt like a new life had started for him. A life, that offered a future. The film he made about his journey from Africa to Europe gets shown all over the world and throughout Germany, where Abou lives as an asylum seeker. His life oscillates between that of an artist with a voice, who is invited to screenings and events, and the isolation and boredom in a remote refugee centre. An essayistic reflection about Europe’s invisible borders and filmmaking as an act of self-empowerment.

Few of the characteristics that can be associated with Jean Paul Civyrac can be seen in his first film, a 14 minute short feature. Inevitably, considering its short length, the film is necessarily very much a character study, since there is little room to develop much in the way of a plot. Luc (Jean Descanvelle) is a young man who is determined to do things his own way and consequently conflicts with everyone he meets. He doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks, isn’t interested in any advice they might have to give and is not interested in assistance from friends or family. He is going to do things his way, and do whatever it takes to make money, which is mainly performing sexual favours for any man who is willing to pay for it.

Five young men from well-off families, whom fate never intended to be partisans in an occupied Paris, so different from one other and yet so close, reject the French defeat and resulting German occupation and decide to take on Nazi Germany.

La vie devant elle is the diary of the exile of Elaha, a 14 year old Afghan girl, who films herself with a small camera to tell her story. Through her story, the film portrays the reality of children growing up on the road, tossed from place to place to flee conflicts in the hope of finding a normal life.