Cinémathèque Française

On April 24th, 1982, when Orson Welles was invited to Paris to receive the Légion d'honneur from François Mitterand, a lively filmed interview took place inside the French Cinémathèque.

A red-haired boy is his mother's punching bag; only his father's presence is a great comfort to him, but this weak man is under the shrew's thumb. His pain is so great he feels suicidal.

Thirteen filmmakers talk about Henri Langlois and their relationship with him.

Truffaut au présent is a film divided in three shorts; throughout "Acteurs", "Actrices" and "Couples" we explore François Truffaut's legacy and influence on contemporary French cinema.

Life and work of the founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

This French documentary pays homage to a young man whose passion left a rich and valuable legacy to the world of cinema. Henri Langlois was one of the co-founders of the Cinematheque Francaise, a museum which contains many rare artifacts from early cinema as well as one of the most extensive film archives in the world. This documentary will be most meaningful for those already familiar with Langlois' story. Through old film clips and interviews, Langlois is seen as an eccentric but charismatic young visionary obsessed with preserving and locating old films. Filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky uses scenes from Citizen Kane to compare the portly iconoclast to Charles Foster Kane, in that both Langlois and Welle's fictional newspaper magnate where avid collectors, and both were men of mystery.

One hundred and twenty years of film history in a warehouse in Paris. In the reserves of the French Cinematheque, where thousands of cameras and projectors are sleeping on the shelves. Thousands of stationary machinery, we dream of getting back to work as a great machine back in time. To tell their story, the material history of cinema.

Documentary on the beginnings of Algerian independence filmed during the summer of 1962 in Algiers. The film was banned in France and Algeria but won the Grand Prize at the Leipzig International Film Festival in 1965. Out of friendship, the production company Images de France sent an operator, Bruno Muel, who later declared: "For those who were called to Algeria (for me, 1956-58), participating in a film on independence was a victory over horror, lies and absurdity. It was also the beginning of my commitment to the cinema."

Edited from 4½ hours of unused material left over from the shooting of Jean Renoir's 1936 PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE (A Day in the Country) and donated by the producer Pierre Braunberger to the Cinémathèque Française. Re-edited for a new version, much of the film is shot with synchronised sound with Renoir's voice instructing and guiding the actors.

Eric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.

Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon.

The Life of the Jews in Palestine is a silent documentary film depicting Jews and Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine.

La Cinémathèque offered the filmmaker Marcel Hanoun to make a retrospective of his work, a new film, the one of his choice: a "free" film, which means free to the filmmaker of to see and hear what he wants, who he wants, and, ideally, to make it known and heard by everyone.