The Measure of the Feat

Christophe

It is 1 p.m. on June 30, 1982, when Christophe Profit, 24, shows up at the foot of Les Drus with his pof bag, his climbing shoes and nothing else. He will try the west face of Les Drus in "solo", in the Mont Blanc massif by "Directe Américaine", 1100 meters of vertical and smooth rock. Christophe will achieve the feat of climbing the wall in free solo, without using a rope or any belaying technique. At 4:10 p.m., barely more than three hours after the start of his ascent, the new climbing star can embrace the Virgin of the Drus at the same time as the career of a high-level mountaineer. Three years later, on July 25, 1985, he climbed the north faces of the Matterhorn, the Eiger and the Jorasses in the same day. Awarded at many mountain film festivals, this great documentary is a magnificent testimony to one man's passion for climbing, the mountains and adventure.

Les Carnets De L'Aventure

Les Carnets de l'Aventure is a cult French television program of adventure and extreme sports documentaries broadcast on Saturday afternoons on Antenne 2 (France 2) between 1980 and 1989. At the beginning of the 80s, in full transformation of mountain activities into high level sports, Les Carnets de L'Aventure revealed from to the country that invented alpinism to the whole world the "French-Touch" of these talents of the new approach to the mountains and its new disciplines. Patrick Edlinger and solo free climbing with the film La Vie au Bout des Doigts, directed by Jean-Paul Janssen in 1982. But also his brother in arms Patrick Berhault, Christophe Profit in the solo ascent of Les Drus, the trilogies of Jean-Marc Boivin in hang-gliding, the Himalayan expoits of Marc Batard but also those of Patrick Gabarrou, opener of routes in the Alps and elsewhere, Patrick Vallencant and his extreme skiing, Paul-Émile Victor and many others...

Les 18 du 57, Boulevard de Strasbourg

Staying up day and night and occupying a hairdressing salon at 57 Bd de Strasbourg in Paris, eighteen undocumented workers are on strike since May 22, 2014, protesting against human trafficking and the local mafia.

To Be and to Have

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Who Knows?

We see how a show, created, improvised and acted by the collaboration of students at Strasbourg's National Theater, is developed from start to finish, in this documentary.

At Averroes & Rosa Parks

Averroès and Rosa Parks: two units of the Esquirol Hospital, which - like the Adamant - are part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. From individual interviews to «carer-patient» meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry that continually strives to make room for and rehabilitate the patients’ words. Little by little, each one eases open the door to their world. Within an increasingly worn-out health system, how can the forsaken be given a place among others.

On the Adamant

The Adamant is a unique day-care centre. A floating structure located on the Seine in the heart of Paris, it welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits. The team running it tries to resist the deterioration and dehumanisation of psychiatry as best as they can.

Louvre City

A voyage into the museum's reserves, and part of the extra work involved to mount the expositions after the renovation of the Louvre in the 1980s, when the glass pyramid was added to the classic buildings. From the preservation rooms through the frame and painting retouches by experts, to the personnel instruction on how to be efficient in protecting the collections, and look nice to the visitors.

His Master's Voice

Jacques Lemonnier of IBM France, Francois Dalle of L'Oreal and other ultrapowerful French moguls are surprisingly candid -- and cold-blooded -- as they discuss their attitudes about business in this startling 1978 documentary. After sounding off about unions, strikes, hierarchy and management, the subjects realized how callous they sounded and managed to convince the French government to suppress the film.

I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother…

Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Details of the crime and of the trial that followed are told from varied perspectives, including the written confession of Pierre himself, and form a rich and complex narrative that interrogates the concepts of “truth” and “history”.

Nénette

Nénette, an orangutan, is the star of the Parisian zoo where she has lived most of her long life. She is a mother of four and has survived three mates, and she bonds only with a few select keepers. The camera rests throughout on Nénette and the other apes in everyday situations. We only see the visitors as occasional reflections in the glass, but we hear their recorded comments and conversations alongside interviews with the zoo keepers.

A Tale of the Wind

It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.

La Maison de la Radio

Making a film about a radio station doesn’t sound like the most visually compelling of projects. How many takes do you need before the acoustic transition from the opening to the closing of a door is perfect or the reader's voice correctly modulated? Nicolas Philibert has accepted the challenge to portray that which cannot be seen. Shouldering his camera, he spent half a year wandering the endless corridors of Radio France’s ‘round house’ on the banks of the Seine where he filmed people who dedicate themselves utterly and meticulously to their work.

Animals and More Animals

This fascinating French documentary chronicles the reopening of the Zoology Hall in the Paris Museum of Natural History in 1993. It had been closed for almost thirty years and it took three years of hard work to restore it and the stuffed creatures within.

In the Land of the Deaf

Anyone who has ever ventured to the "Land of the Deafs" will have been struck by the strangeness of the choreographed signs with which deaf people express themselves. Developed ages ago, these signs constitute a veritable language. As precise and subtle as speech, they are as effective as spoken language in making a declaration love or providing a detailed technical description. Jean-Claude, Jeanine, Eric, Cyril, Alain, Juliette, Guy, Aurélien and René have one thing in common - they are all profoundly deaf. So they dream, think and communicate in sign language. Which means that they see the world differently. Viewers embark with them on a discovery of the distant land of the deaf, where sight and touch assume enormous importance.

Each and Every Moment

Every year, thousands of students – mostly female – embark upon courses that will lead them to become nurses. This film follows the ups and downs of an apprenticeship that will confront them, often at a young age, with human fragility, suffering, illness, the flaws in souls and bodies.