Bertrand Tavernier

Divine Comédie, des planches à l'écran

Jean-Marie Nizan, Stéphane Bergouhnioux

Mathieu Amalric, Yves Angelo

The Lumière Brothers' First Films

Brian Q. Kelley, Thierry Frémaux

Mrs. Auguste Lumière, Antoine Lumière

A collection of short films made by the Lumiere brothers, a team of pioneering filmmakers in turn-of-the-century France, narrated by Bertrand Tavernier.

Michel Legrand: Sans demi-mesure

Grégory Monro

Michel Legrand, Damien Chazelle

This documentary recounts the life of the late composer Michel Legrand, known for his works on Les Parapluies de Cherbourg or Les Demoiselles De Rochefort with the famous director Jacques Demy.

Voyage à travers le cinéma français

Bertrand Tavernier

Bertrand Tavernier

Famous French director Tavernier tells us about his fantastic voyage through the cinema of his country.

La Guerre sans nom

Bertrand Tavernier

Bertrand Tavernier, Patrick Rotman

Documentary on the French-Algerian conflict 1954-1962 which was never officially called a "war", including interviews with some of the survivors.

François Truffaut: Portraits volés

Michel Pascal, Serge Toubaina

François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Léaud

Twenty-six people - including two daughters, an ex-wife, his last lover, actors, fellow directors and writers, a neighbor, and boyhood friends - talk about François Truffaut. They discuss his attitudes toward wealth, his early writings about cinema, the undercurrent of violence in his films and his personality, the way he used and altered events in his life when making films, his search for a father (both artistic and biological), his relationship with his mother, the scenes in his films that cause a squirm of embarrassment, and his ultimate mysticism. Clips from a dozen of his films are included.

Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows

Bruce Ricker

Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood

Hollywood careers are full of make-or-break moments. For Clint Eastwood, one such moment came when studio powers agreed to let him make his directing debut. That story and others comprise this portrait of the famed Hollywood icon. His career is explored via an array of film clips, interviews and more.

In The Tracks of Lalo Schifrin

Pascale Cuenot

Lalo Schifrin, Bertrand Tavernier

Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

Marcel Ophüls

Klaus Barbie, Marcel Ophüls

Winner of a Best Documentary Academy Award, Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape--with U.S. help--to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.

Claude Sautet ou La magie invisible

N.T. Binh

Claude Sautet, Bertrand Tavernier

Thanks to a series of unpublished interviews, recorded shortly before his death, director Claude Sautet gives us a fascinating lesson in cinema. Through his thirteen films, he tells about his career and his work as a director.

Life and Nothing But

Bertrand Tavernier

Philippe Noiret, Sabine Azéma

January, 1920. 350,000 French soldiers remain missing in action. Major Dellaplane tirelessly matches the dead and the wounded with families' descriptions. Honor and ethics drive him; he hates the idea of "the unknown soldier." Into his sector, looking for her husband, comes a haughty, politically connected Parisian, Madame Irène de Courtil. Brusquely, Dellaplane offers her 1/350,000th of his time, but as their paths cross and she sees his courage and resolve, feelings change. After he finds a surprising connection between her missing husband and a local teacher, Irène makes Dellaplane an offer. This man of action hesitates: has he missed his only chance?

Blue Note - A Story of Modern Jazz

Andreas Morell, Julian Benedikt

Freddie Hubbard, Gil Mellé

"It must schwing!" was the motto of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants who in 1939 set up Blue Note Records, the jazz label that was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins. Blue Note, the most successful movie ever made about jazz, is a testimony to the passion and vision of these two men and certainly swings like the propulsive sounds that made their label so famous.

Code Name: Melville

Olivier Bohler

Michel Dreyfus-Schmidt, Leo Fortel

Mixing interviews, rare archival footage and film extracts, the film shows how Melville's works were impacted by what he experienced in his youth during WWII, and how it structured his whole approach to cinema, not only in its thematic but also in its aesthetics.

It All Starts Today

Bertrand Tavernier

Maria Pitarresi, Philippe Torreton

In a mining town which has been blighted by economic downturns, an elementary school headmaster struggles to obtain social services on behalf of his students.

Un dimanche à la campagne

Bertrand Tavernier

Sabine Azéma, Louis Ducreux

In France, before WWI. As every Sunday, an old painter living in the country is visited by his son Gonzague, coming with his wife and his three children. Then his daugther Irene arrives. She is always in a hurry, she lives alone and does not come so often... An intimist chronicle in which what is not shown, what is guessed, is more important than how it looks, dealing with what each character expects of life.

L'Univers de Jacques Demy

Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda, Anouk Aimée

Agnès Varda's documentary portrait of her late husband, Jacques Demy. A companion piece to her Jacquot de Nantes.