Jean-Gabriel Périot

An intimate and political history of the French working class from the early 1950s to the present day.

Revolution, queer and rock n roll.

By going back into the cinema of the 1968 era and going forward with present-day interviews of young people who replay excerpts of films jumping out from the past, Our Defeats draw the portrait of our current relations with politics. Our Defeats, or do we keep enough forces to confront ourselves with the chaos of today?

Documentary short about the Black Panther movement.

“I make films because I don’t know. I seek. I try to see things more clearly, pushing myself to at least know how to express questions. It’s a way for me to open a place for thought.” - Jean-Gabriel Périot

At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.

A very private moment in which the body becomes an artificial and fabricated entity. A young man changes in front of a mirror. He cleans the scars on his stomach, takes out his contact lenses, removes his dentures and brushes his teeth before leaving. This brings up the question of appearances: here we see what we are not in the habit of seeing. There is also the question of intimacy.... A question, however, that remains unanswered.

In 1914, the Czech architect Jan Letzel designed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima Center for the World Expo, which has turned into ruins after the atomic bombing in August 1945. “Atomic Dome” – all that remains of the destroyed palace of the exhibition – has become part of the Hiroshima memorial. In 2007, French sculptor, painter and film director Jean-Gabriel Périot assembled this cinematic collage from hundreds of multi-format, color and black and white photographs of different years’ of “Genbaku Dome”.

An aquatic ballet to the sound of It's Raining Men.

Medically speaking, we're moving forward.

A beautiful, elegiac cycle expressing the boundless hope and infinite nostalgia of the voyage, consisting entirely of still images and painstakingly assembled into a emotionally moving pictorial essay. Periot: 'Remember that I am the cause of your journey. Don't lose me along the way.'

The life of Michèle Firk — a trailblazing French journalist, film critic, aspiring director and communist activist involved in various liberation struggles in the second half of the 20th century — as told by narrator Alice Diop, modern day French director.

Pornography can sometimes be beautiful, sensitive, aesthetic. A movie about making love, respirations, exhibition, loveniness, silences...

Jean-Gabriel Périot sketches the portrait of a group of women for whom music is a means of resistance and of escaping isolation.

On the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Akihiro, a native Japanese filmmaker living in Paris, travels to Japan to interview survivors for a documentary commemorating the victims of the attack. Deeply moved by the interviews, he decides to take a break to wander through the city during which he meets Michiko, a merry, enigmatic young woman. Michiko takes him for a joyful and improvised journey from the city towards the sea where the horrors of the past are mingled with the simplicity of the present.

"I'm gay, I'm a fag, I'm proud and I really love sex."

Following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence in April 1992, Bosnian Serb troops besieged and bombed Sarajevo. Over a period of four years, five young filmmakers documented the bombardments and daily life during the siege—for some, the aim was simply to report the news; for others, it was a way of dealing with their fears.

We are many. We are uniforms. We smile in the picture. But We are NOT happy

Whaling has been around for centuries. It seems to be the fruit of man’s violence, destroying himself by destroying nature. Accompanying the rise of capitalism, the practice survives today, reflecting humans’ eternal destructiveness of nature and the creatures unable to resist them.

Eight portraits, eight dreams, eight escapes

A young man, looking for a job...

The story is adapted from Baader-Meinhof by Don DeLillo and depicts the mysterious meeting between a woman and a man in an art gallery.

If politics were to come back, it could only be from its savage and disreputable fringe. Then, a muffled rumor shall arise whence that roar is heard: "We are scum! We are barbarian!" (Alain Brossat)