Raymond Depardon

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For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.

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Documentary Short

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Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

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The Garet farm is for sale. Brothers Jean and Raymond Depardon chat about the past and the future of the farm.

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Second documentary of a trilogy produced on the long term (together with Profils paysans: l'approche (2001) and Profils paysans: La vie moderne (2008)), showing the simple lives of farmers in contemporary Southern France.

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The proceedings of a Paris courtroom are the grist for this documentary. Drawn from over 200 appearances before the same female judge, the director chooses a dozen or so varied misdemeanor and civil hearings to highlight the subtle details of human behavior. In the process he draws attention to issues of guilt, innocence, policing and ethnicity in France.

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Loosely based on Diégo Brosset’s novel, set in the Sahara at the beginning of the twentieth century. A man of the desert is adopted by some hunters and becomes a highly respected guide while trying to escape colonization.

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During his stay in the Yanomami village of Watoriki with the anthropologist Bruce Albert, the French documentary filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon filmed in parallel a group of hunters and a group of Yanomami shamans in order to highlight – without having to explain – the close interdependence between the Shamanic metaphysics and the traditional knowledge of the forest.

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

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The first of a documentary serie about rural France.

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Muriel Leferle is 22-years-old, a convicted felon, HIV-positive, and can talk her way out of nearly anything. Filmmaker Raymond Depardon first encountered Leferle while shooting his documentary Delits Flagrants/Caught In The Act, about criminals dealing with the judicial system, and eventually decided her story was too good to limit to the 20 minutes of screen time she won in that picture. Muriel Leferle tells her hair-raising life story in greater scope than in the earlier film (both the truth and the version she gives to the judge); despite an unrepentant attitude about her life of crime, Leferle comes off as oddly likable, with street smarts and spunk to spare.

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Utilizing a combination of professional actors and man-on-the-street interviews, French director Raymond Depardon has created a film about filmmaking that centers on a rather discriminating director's search for the perfect leading lady. The main problem is that the helmer (Luc Delahaye) doesn't really know what his next film will be about, let alone what kind of woman should be his star. Looking for inspiration, the director and his casting agent (Sylvie Peyre) visit the Saint Lazare train station in Paris and shoot some footage of passengers entering and exiting the trains. Later he encounters a few actresses, but rather than asking about their professional experiences, the director focuses on their personal lives. After several fruitless interviews, the director confesses to the casting agent that he really wants to utilize a non-professional actress.

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Photography trip to Bolivia filmed with a rostrum camera and edited with original sounds from the country.

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Using a rostrum camera, Raymond Depardon films a long series of photos, from the narrow streets of Paris to the endless desert, accompanied by original sounds of the city. A Cartier Foundation initiative for the contemporary arts.

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Miscellaneous images of African life.

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Film about writer Malraux, with photographs portraying great moments of his life and accompanied by his most famous speeches.

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40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

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Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his "À propos de Nice" from 1930.

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In the context of the World Aids Day on the 1st December 1994, the French Ministry of Defence commissioned the producer Raymond DEPARDON to make a film to show to all new French military recruits called up for their national service, in which they gave their 'personal' views on the AIDS (Sida) problem. Each year about 240.000 young men are called to do their military service in the French Armed Forces. They remain in bases both in France and in French overseas territories, the film will be projected throughout these multiple installations. The 'on camera" interviews by Depardon were authorised without any form of restriction by the military authorities, selecting a scattering of young men from all walks of life who will spend 10 months under the flag. They were each free to give their own personal opinions related to the Aids problem, without any form of censorship.

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This documentary is a collection of footage of 14 suspects being 'interviewed' by the deputy public prosecutors.

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A compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.

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Raymond Depardon reflects on the photographs he took at the San Clemente psychiatric hospital. He discusses the photographer’s wandering eye and his hesitation when it comes to choosing the right image.

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A European researcher is abducted by some ill-educated rebels in a North African country. Their reasons are unclear...

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A documentary filmed in the psychiatric ward of the Motel Dieu at a large hospital in Paris. The patients arrive on their own, or with considerable help from the police, but all of them are in need of medical attention.

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It is slow, succinct and absolutely riveting. With his photojournalist's eye, and simple but inspired camera work, Depardon plunges us into both the sounds and silences of a day and a night in the city.

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After offering spectators a projection/comparison of extracts from 17 films (each time, the first 5 minutes of their second reel) entitled "Une histoire A/B du cinéma" (A/B history of cinema), Jean-Luc Godard becomes a film historian, reflecting live and in public on his future Histoire(s) du cinéma (History(s) of cinema), which will not be considered complete until 1998. Edited from Betacam cassette rushes recovered in 2023 and digitized by the Cinémathèque française.

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A man invites a woman to share his room in a hostel and gradually falls in love with her.

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This documentary is an autobiography based on director Depardon's voice, his face and pictures from his childhood which are all mixed together on screen and contrasted with selected pictures he shot between 1957 and 1977 and now comments on.

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