An account of the last two centuries of the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. How human beings have progressed so much in such a short time through war and the selfish interests of a few, belligerent politicians and captains of industry, damaging the welfare of the majority of mankind, impoverishing the weakest, greedily devouring the limited resources of the Earth.
Gombessa Expedition 4 Laurent Ballesta went to observe a gathering of thousands of groupers during the full moon of June 2014 (Le mystère mérou) in the southern pass of the Polynesian atoll of Fakarava, where he discovered a pack of over seven hundred grey sharks. How can this unprecedented density be explained? Could it be that social behaviors govern this wild horde? During three years of preparation, he and the other divers on his international scientific team tamed their fear by abandoning the defensive reflexes that provoke shark aggression, with the aim of slipping into the heart of the raging pack to study and film it from the inside. Sharks fitted with microchips, receiving antennas, hydrophones, an ark of 32 synchronized cameras...: a whole technological arsenal is mobilized for the project. As the groupers approach for their annual spawning, what battle plan will the sharks deploy?
From her birth in Warsaw to her entry into the Pantheon, Marie Curie's work and career is a myth. Honored throughout the world and embodying a model of excellence, its history and life remain unknown in France. An intimate portrait of an exceptional scientist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 100 years ago.
Chambord, the most impressive castle in the Loire Valley, in France, a truly Renaissance treasure, has always been an enigma to generations of historians. Why did King Francis I (1494-1547), who commissioned it, embark on this epic project in the heart of the marshlands in 1519? What significance did he want the castle to have? What role did his friend, Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) play? Was he the architect or who was?
Based on the latest technological and scientific advances, this documentary explores the palace's architectural past to resurrect Louis XIV's vanished Versailles. Versailles was an ongoing building site at the time of Louis XIV and continued to be transformed by its successive occupants later on. The Versailles we know today only vaguely resembles the Versailles of the Sun King. Most of its original features and apartments no longer exist. Thanks to the digitisation of thousands of plans, a team of scientists takes us back in time to explore this forgotten past in a new way, through a large-scale reconstruction project to bring back the Versailles of Louis XIV as he designed it, according to his requirements and dreams.
This documentary outlines the unique properties and latest studies of "Physarum Polycephalum", also known as Blob.
Over the centuries, Mont Saint-Michel, an extraordinary island located in the delta of the Couesnon River, in Normandy, France, a place floating between the sea and the sky, has been a sanctuary, an abbey, a fortress and a prison. But how was this architectural wonder built?
Dark matter fills the cosmos, and yet its identity is still unknown. For the first time, a film portrays the wild scientific quest find out what it is. This breath-taking thriller leads us to the dawn of a scientific and metaphysical revolution, akin to Copernic's or Galileo's. It could totally change the way we perceive our world.
Alternating interview segments, shots of Martinique landscapes and scenes from Aimé Césaire's play La Tragédie du roi Christophe (1963), Sarah Maldoror portrays her friend as a politician, a poet, and a founder of the Négritude movement.
For the past 20 years, the world has seen an alarming decrease in IQ and a rise of autism and behavioral disorders. This international scientific investigation reveals how chemicals in objects surrounding us affect our brain, and especially those of fetuses.
Boris and Sandra meet and immediately love each other with a lively passion. Enough to help them fight the best enemy of their love: addiction. That of Boris on drugs, that of Sandra in Boris. Linked, attached to each other, reclusive but alive, they will try to live their love in a closed circuit. In doing so, everyone will discover in themselves an unexpected strength and humanity.
Gombessa Expedition 1 To dive for the Coelacanth is to go back in time. In 1938, when it was known only as a fossil, a Coelacanth was discovered in South Africa in a fisherman's net. This species bears witness to an evolutionary bifurcation 380 million years ago, and bears the marks of a great event: the day the fish left the ocean for the open air. Does it hold the secret to the transition to walking on land? In 2010, a marine biologist and outstanding diver, Laurent Ballesta, took the first photographs of the Coelacanth in its ecosystem. In April 2013, divers and researchers set down their equipment at the Sodwana base camp in South Africa, in the club founded by Peter Timm (who died in 2014). Six weeks of extreme diving at depths of over 120 meters, in an attempt to film the Coelacanth with a double-headed camera, collect its DNA and tag a subject with a satellite-linked beacon...
In Jean Rouch's cinematic reinterpretation of Julius-Amédée Laou's theatrical work, a freshly appointed nurse steps into the chaotic world of a psychiatric ward. Tasked with nurturing the minds within, she forms a profound connection with a patient from Martinique who has been confined within the institution's walls for half a century. As their relationship deepens, the lines between reality and delusion blur, weaving a complex narrative of human connection and psychological intrigue.
"Tourou et Bitti", an eight minute documentary concerning a ritual in Niger, is yet another example of Rouch's excellence in creating documentaries which surpass the conventional documentary format. Just as frightening and fascinating as "Les maîtres fous", this one goes straight into the roots of ancient African cultures, in which music has an hypnotic effect, being at the same time an exorcism and a public show. Both the female and the male dancers are almost deities about to be unleashed... Spectral and humanitarian.
In February 1974, Pam Sambo Zima, the oldest of the priests of possession in Niamey, Niger, died at the age of seventy-plus years. In his backyard, the followers from the possession cult symbolically break the dead priest's ritual vases and cry for the deceased while dividing up the clothes of the divinities.
In 1972, the Dogon of the Bandiagara cliff in Mali celebrated the funeral of Anaï Dolo, head of the Bongo Masks Society, who died at the age of 122. On this occasion, the large Bongo mask, is erected and for twenty days, family members, elders, men from neighbouring villages purify the village.
When a huge meteorite crashed into the earth 66 million years ago and caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs, some of the planet’s tiniest species survived the cataclysm, and—against all odds—eventually became some of the greatest giants to ever roam the earth. From the poles of the planet to the belly of the equator, this documentary sheds new light on four giant animals that are still a great mystery to science today: the Titanoboa snake, the Megalodon shark, the giant rhinoceros and the giant sloth.
