Joël Farges

From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

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A story of an extraordinary artist who has unintentionally signed a deal with a devil. Jiří Trnka was one of the biggest Czech artists of the 20th century and one of the founders of the puppet animation. His work demonstrated the world that communist society can provide better conditions for extraordinary artistic creations. The ideological clash between West and East didn’t leave children and their stories apart from their struggle in ideological and political positions.

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Mario and his brother Alonso become committed to fishing in a coral-reef in the southern Philippines. With many other children of different origin they work for starvation wages on the ship of unscrupulous captain Murène. Together they drive shoals of fish into a big fish trap having to use the dangerous muro-ami technique in the coral-reefs. Fastened to a stone, the little divers jump into the water to reach the depth faster. Without any equipment they dive down 30 meters. The brutal captain treats the exhausted children like slaves

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In 1889, mounted on a small gray horse named Serko, Dimitri leaves his garrison on the Asian borders of the Russian Empire on the banks of the Amur River. After extraordinary adventures, they both arrive in St. Petersburg, at the court of the Tsar. Having covered more than 9000 kilometers in less than 200 days, this young rider has achieved the most fantastic equestrian feat of all time.

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Whenever people are released from their society's constraints, there is the possibility that they will behave badly, at least according to the rules of the society they have left behind. This seems to have been particularly the case for Europeans living in colonial establishments in Africa and Asia. In this drama, based on a story by Stefan Zweig, Dr. Steiner (Andrzej Seweryn) was caught with his fingers in the till at a German hospital. Rather than prosecute him, they gave him the option of emigrating elsewhere. He chose to serve at a clinic in a remote part of Portuguese Goa. He has been on his best behavior for years, but when the beautiful wife (Fanny Ardant) of a diplomat comes to him asking for an abortion, he is tempted to ask for sexual favors in return, and his life swiftly goes out of control.

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The story of three young people in 1951, when the former French trading post of Pondicherry is attached to India.

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A young woman, fleeing the bloody 1934 events in Shanghai, is sheltered in France by two friends of her late father, the psychiatrist Freyer and cardiologist Ménard. While the first turns her into a subject of study, the second feels compassion for her

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A pioneer of cinema and inventor of the first moving images, Émile Reynaud achieved dazzling success before the advent of the cinematograph, but was sadly forgotten thereafter. Yet his pantomimes still fill us with wonder today.

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Three episodes from the history of socialism: Babeuf, whose virulent discourse is a radical assessment of the bourgeois revolution of 1789 (Vincent Nordon episode); the legend of Napoleon I, or the formation of the state as it still dominates today (François Barat episode); and the carnage of the Paris Commune, which official history strives to repress and forget (Joël Farges episode). What does it mean to make a historical film today? It means illuminating the present in the light of the past, and therefore adopting the new modes of modern storytelling to challenge what dominates us, structures us, and oppresses us.

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A César award nominated short documentary on the renowned early French film maker.

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Chouga is a beautiful, rich and beloved young woman. She is thirty and lives in Astana, the Kazak new capital. She is married to a famous scientist in his sixties and has a seven-year-old son. Her brother and sister-in-law live in Almaty. The couple is tearing apart and Chouga’s brother requests her to come and try to bring them back together. There she meets Ablaï, a rich and idle young man whom she strongly feels attracted to. Once back to Astana, Chouga tries to withstand this sensual attraction about which she has a premonition of a tragic outcome.

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Jacques Tourneur is a director of B movies, yet his films display such sophistication that they attract the attention of cinephiles. It was from the 1950s–1960s onward that his work began to gain recognition. Deeply marked by the uncanny and by fear, what does it reveal about the filmmaker’s personality? His apparent nonchalance may well be nothing more than a façade.

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To give creativity free reign, in the space of fifty minutes: this is the strength of the documentary series Cinémas mythiques. This episode gives the critic Alain Bergala complete freedom to commemorate the original Éden de La Ciotat cinema. The oldest continuously operating cinema in the world first opened as a theatre in 1889, but the very same year it also hosted its first commercial film screening, comprised of nineteen Lumière “views”. Threatened with closure in the 1980s, the cinema was reopened in 2013 after a restoration project. This luminous documentary accompanies Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne over the course of a few days in October 2021 as they walk through the Teatro Éden, the shipyard and the Palais Lumière built by Antoine Lumière, the father of Auguste and Louis. And it does not forget the legendary station from L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat.

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From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

Open details →

A story of an extraordinary artist who has unintentionally signed a deal with a devil. Jiří Trnka was one of the biggest Czech artists of the 20th century and one of the founders of the puppet animation. His work demonstrated the world that communist society can provide better conditions for extraordinary artistic creations. The ideological clash between West and East didn’t leave children and their stories apart from their struggle in ideological and political positions.

Open details →