A French documentary or, one might say more accurately, a mockumentary, by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually...
Intimately following 1st and 6th graders at a public elementary school in Tokyo, we observe kids learning the traits necessary to become part of Japanese society.
An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?
Using their bare hands, married couple Htwe Tin and Thein Shwe draw oil from a pit they drilled themselves on the land next to their house. There are lots of these “artisanal” oilfields dotted around Myanmar, where people have swapped crop cultivation for selling the oil they pump from the...
Luc Lagier puts Alain Resnais' film back in its historical context and in the filmmaker's biography. He tells the story, then the development of what was originally intended to be a short documentary film and which turned into an unusual allegory. Composed of fascinating archives, including notably...
In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the...
Doaa el-Adl, the first woman to be awarded the esteemed Journalistic Distinction in Caricature, serves as a catalyst for transformation within the predominantly male-dominated realm of Egyptian political cartoonists. Challenging patriarchal norms, she routinely confronts censorship, harassment, and...
Moscow, January 1996. Boris Yeltsin gets ready to run for a second mandate of the presidency of the young Russian Federation. Polls are in the single digits. A painful economic transition, war in Chechnya, and the rise of criminal groups have left the majority of Russians dissatisfied with...
The history of RKO - one of the legendary "Big Five" studios of the Hollywood’s Golden Age, from its creation in 1928 (when the movies started talking) to its demise in 1956, largely due to the mismanagement by its last CEO, Howard Hughes. During this period, RKO produced some 550 films including...
March 2002, during an election campaign, Simon Barrachet, offensive journalist, took over the newspaper and a television station seeks to impose its vision of information. His team is going through a period of profound change, while the themes of the 2002 campaign invade every screen: the absence...
The story of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo Trial, which, just after the Second World War, was established in Japan as a special jurisdiction in 1946 (it was closed in 1948) to judge the war crimes of the Japanese leaders; and how and why officials in...
Written and directed by Hitchcock historian Noël Simsolo, this 2004 French television documentary explores the earliest years of Alfred Hitchcock's film career, beginning with his success in the production of The Lodger (1926) and following the filmmaker through his transition to sound films and...
Christopher Doyle is one of the best known and most acclaimed directors of photography in world cinema. Born in Australia, he sees himself as an Asian citizen rather than a Westerner. His artistic contribution to the films of Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Jimou and Fruit Chan films, among others, is...
For around ten years, natural disasters have been occurring more frequently, causing widespread destruction; yet industrialized countries still refuse to implement or persist in doubting the actions they must take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and fail to revise their policies for economic...
Documentary about the Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, where we see him attend film festivals, personal influences and of course the study of his main films, apart from the opinions about him by other filmmakers such as Takeshi Kitano or Kinji Fukasaku.
'Afghanistan 1979: the war that changed the world', is a French documentary about the Sovjet invasion in Afghanistan in 1979. It was one of the most crucial events of the 20th century, and changed the world forever. This documentary gives a good insight in the Afghan-Russian war ; the alliance...
In this archival documentary, Sydney Pollack discusses his career and relationship with various actors, directors and producers. A large portion of the documentary examines Pollack and Robert Redford's friendship, as well as the various films they did together during the years.
