A French Youth (2024)

Perdus entre deux rives, les Chibanis oubliés

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The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

TGV, la réussite française

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Concode, an Epic Saga

Fifty years ago, on Sunday, 2 March 1969, Concorde flew for the first time. Starting from this inaugural flight, the film goes back in time to the origin of the conception of Concorde.

Flying Supersonic

Thundering across the sky on elegant white wings, the Concorde was an instant legend. But behind the glamour of jet setting at Mach 2 were stunning scientific innovations and political intrigue. Fifteen years after Concorde's final flight, this documentary takes you inside the historic international race to develop the first supersonic airliner. Hear stories from those inside the choreographed effort to design and build Concorde in two countries at once - and the crew members who flew her.

De Charles de Gaulle à Emmanuel Macron, les gardiens de l'empire

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Marine le Pen - The Last March?

This film is an uncompromising portrait of a woman who no-one could have imagined in a position of power a few years ago . A look at the woman and, through her, at the party that continuously raises concerns and stirs up the media.

Cheb Hasni, Je vis encore !

Director Djamel Kelfaoui pays tribute to the great singer Cheb Hasni, king of sentimental raï, who became cult in Algeria and beyond its borders, and who was murdered in the street in September 1994 in Oran, at the age of 26. Unique and last interview filmed a few months before the assassination of the singer considered the king of “raï love” or “sentimental song”. Cheb Hasni had recorded more than 150 cassettes during his career. His memory remains very alive in the Maghreb and Arab world and its diaspora throughout the world. A transgenerational icon, he will be posthumously decorated with the National Merit medal at the rank of Achir.

Le Diable de la République : 40 ans de Front national

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Les yeux dans les Bleus

This documentary follows the French soccer team on their way to victory in the 1998 World Cup in France. Stéphane Meunier spent the whole time filming the players, the coach and some other important characters of this victory, giving us a very intimate and nice view of them, as if we were with them.

Glimpses of Morocco and Algiers

This FitzPatrick Traveltalk short visits the cities of Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakesh in Morocco, as well as the city of Algiers in Algeria.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Don't Lose Your Head

Don't Lose Your Head was a DVD documentary concerning Doctor Who that was released on 28 January 2013.

Croquantes

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My Life Inside

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.

Woman of Courage - Louisa Ighilahriz

The autobiographical account of the tormented life of a witness of the century: Louisa Ighilahriz, activist and leading figure in Algerian independence. A student, she joined the independence struggle at the age of 20, joining the ranks of the FLN on the eve of the Battle of Algiers in late 1956 under the name Lila. She took part in the high school students' strike, then fled into the maquis when she was actively sought after. She was part of the French FLN support network of "suitcase carriers" during the Battle of Algiers. Seriously wounded alongside her network leader, Saïd Bakel, during an ambush in 1957, hospitalized and then imprisoned, she suffered numerous tortures in French prisons. She will be saved from certain death by an anonymous person, she will seek, for forty years, to find him just to show him her gratitude... Emblematic of the painful Franco-Algerian history, Louisa's story is poignant and imbued with humanism.

Michel Foucault par lui-même

A voyage to the center of the thought of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a tireless explorer of the margins, a brilliant and atypical thinker, through excerpts from his books and lectures, and the use of images that resonate with them.

Emilie Busquant, une passion algérienne

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TGV, 30 ans de vitesse

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Dream of the Wild Horses

The horses in Denys Colomb Daunant’s dream poem are the white beasts of the marshlands of the Camargue in South West France. Daunant was haunted by these creatures. His obsession was first visualized when he wrote the autobiographical script for Albert Lamorisse’s award-winning 1953 film White Mane. In this short the beauty of the horses is captured with a variety of film techniques and by Jacques Lasry’s beautiful electronic score.

Lynx

In the heart of the Jura mountains, a call resounds through the forest. The silhouette of a Eurasian lynx creeps through the trees. A male is looking for its mate. Suddenly a call answers back. It is the beginning of the story of a lynx’s family we will follow over the seasons. While it is rare to come across this private feline, it is exceptional to discover its daily life in the wild.

1974, une partie de campagne

Following the 1974 French presidential campaign with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

Madame Soleil, la femme qui était supposée savoir

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Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Les paillotes refusent de boire la tasse

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Cyrille

Cyrille, a young gay farmer from Auvergne, has only one friend, a homosexual like him. One day, he goes on vacation to a beach in Charente Maritime. He cannot swim and sees the sea for the first time. It was there that he met the director Rodolphe Marconi who decided to devote this sensitive and gentle portrait to him, plunging us into an agricultural world in crisis and into a life often lonely and made up of hard work rarely pays off.

Balladur-Chirac, mensonges et trahisons

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Le Pen : Secrets, pardons et trahisons

Investigation into the Le Pen family, which has been a prominent presence on the political stage for three generations, with two of its members reaching the second round of the presidential election.

Kings of Pastry

The collar awarded to the winners of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman in France) is more than the ultimate recognition for every pastry chef - it is a dream and an obsession. The 3-day competition includes everything from delicate chocolates to precarious six foot sugar sculptures and requires that the chefs have extraordinary skill, nerves of steel and luck. The film follows Jacquy Pfeiffer, founder of The French Pastry School in Chicago, as he returns to France to compete against 15 of France's leading pastry chefs. The filmmakers were given first time/exclusive access to this high-stakes drama of passion, sacrifice, disappointment and joy in the quest to have President Sarkozy declare them one of the best in France.

Mariner of the Mountains

Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by the memory of his mother, Iracema, and his camera, Aïnouz gives a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland, interweaving present, past, and future.

Le 3615 ne répond plus

The adventure of the minitel, a small cubic terminal with a folding keyboard that began in the 1970s in the labs of France Telecom, is closely linked to Alsace. Alsatians had then in hand the future tools of interactive communication. What remains today of all those minitel years? Like a nocturnal and intimate road-movie, this documentary went to meet the last people who are still interested in the minitel, this strange beige box of access to telematic services, corny today, but pioneers at the end of the last century.

A President, Europe and War

They call each other Emmanuel and Vladimir - but despite the informal tone, a fateful negotiation is taking place. During France's presidency of the EU, President Macron takes on the task of negotiating with President Putin in an attempt to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. For the first time, we get to follow the diplomatic game behind the scenes and hear parts of their phone conversations.

The Revenge of Bernadette Chirac

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You Alone

In their spare time, after their studies or their work, children and adolescents between the ages of eight and sixteen meet at the School of Bullfighting in Madrid to learn the Art of Cúchares: Torear. In their stomachs there is no hunger as in the past, their dreams do not lie in having a farmhouse and being famous. Their only dreams are to be in front of a bull, animal with which death goes, fact of which they are fully aware, as their teachers continually remind them. These, retired bullfighters, some by age, others by force and all with their bodies full of scars produced by the horns of a bull. The nude bullfighting scene is fascinating without being exploitive, and it serves as an analogy for the vulnerability these young bullfighters have when in the ring with the bulls.

Les gens du Nord

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Maison du Bonheur

When asked to make a documentary about her friend’s mother—a Parisian astrologer named Juliane—the filmmaker sets off for Montmartre with a Bolex to craft a portrait of an infectiously exuberant personality and the pre-war apartment she’s called home for 50 years.

La Ve, une constitution sur mesure ?

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