ISKRA

The mother and housewife of our time becomes involved in the Flag War.

Six years after I left my country, Brazil, I was sent an old sound reel in the post and I discovered a recording of my parent's wedding ceremony. I was twenty-six. It was the first time I'd ever heard my mother's voice as she died when I was a year old. I was terribly moved and I decided to go to Brazil.

Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat is an epic political essay tracing the rise and decline of the global left from the 1960s to the 1970s. Through archival footage and commentary, the film examines revolutionary movements in France, Latin America, and beyond, reflecting on the ideals, failures, and fading hopes of a generation.

A documentary look at striking workers in a textile plant in Besançon, France, centering on interviews with workers about their motivations for becoming involved with the union and the struggles of their day to day life.

Pauline, Norah, Kristina and others wait for hours, sitting under a hut deep in the Bois de Vincennes. In front of the administrative detention center (CRA) in Paris, they have all come to see their loved ones locked up. Lives on hold, awaiting deportation or release. On this stage, these women tell their stories, talk to each other, share their experience, their revolt and their dreams with new visitors. They are the mirror of migrant detention, its reverse view.

In a humanitarian camp opened in Paris, refugees are in transit. In this "first reception" center, they are resting from the street where they were stranded when they arrived in France. A few days of humanity, that we spend with them. But already, they have to face the Prefecture and hear the cold administrative sentence. We are always with them.

Composed entirely of still photographs taken by Chris Marker across 26 countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries presents a dialogue between three voices reflecting on the meaning of images and travel. Through this photo-essay form, Marker explores the relationship between still and moving images and the act of seeing itself.

Writer and pedagogue Fernand Deligny influenced a number of artists and French intellectuals. His work on autism influenced Deleuze and Guattari's theory of the rhizome. Francois Truffaut turned to his ideas to complete Les 400 Coups. Throughout the film Deligny plays with the possibilities of the camera to live and think closer to the human subject, offering with Le Moindre Geste a unique film to the world, one of most fascinating in French cinema. Situated [visually] between mountain western and integral neorealism, the film tells the story of two teenagers, escaped prisoners of an asylum, running away through the Cevennes.

Recounts Ireland's history from British colonization to the territory's division in 1922, then from 1968 details a decade of events through images and eyewitness accounts of killings and such massacres as the infamous "Bloody Sunday" as the IRA argues their cause.

The violent break-up of former Yugoslavia is described from the Serbian point of view, using the story of ethnically mixed couple in war-torn city of Vukovar as metaphor.

A series of 43 documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers and each running between two and four minutes. Each "tract" espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers' strikes and the events of Paris in May '68.

Looking back at the history of the struggle for true equality, we follow the daughters and sons of immigrant workers who have been nominated as candidates representing "diversity" in various election campaigns since the 2007 presidential election. On the ground, through meetings, debates, and more "intimate" encounters with candidates and actors from past struggles, a great diversity of thought emerges. But they all have the same goal: not to be just "candidates for Beurs." With many activists from working-class neighborhoods, from Clichy-sous-Bois to Marseille, via Roubaix, and candidates Mouloud Aounit, Kamel Hamza, Faouzi Lamdaoui, Halima Boumedienne, Omar Slaouti, Samia Ghali, Karim Zeribi, Rama Yade, and others... Will these "new faces" of the Republic be in the picture when the votes are counted, or will they simply be "candidates for the Beurs"?

In 1923 the scientist Von Dracula invented Vampisol, a drink that allowed vampires to live in the sun. La Capa Nostra and the European Vampire Group confront each other in Havana to control the Vampisol, but Pepe, Von Dracula's nephew, sang the Vampisol formula for free on Radio Vampiro Internacional. Now Pepe must face the Nazi vampires, who use the most powerful Vampisol: El Vampiyaba.

On April 27, 1968, workers from the Rhodiaceta factory in Besançon gathered at the village hall of Palente-les-Orchamps to attend the screening of the film À bientôt j'espoir by Mario Marret and Chris Marker. This sound documentary reproduces the critical debate that followed. In June 1969, Pol Cèbe, the head of the Cultural Center of Palente-les-Orchamps, brought to this documentary a conclusion in the form of a report. Echoing an intense debate after the screening of À bientôt j'espoir, La Charnière by the Groupe Medvedkine captures those moments when workers expressed dissatisfaction with the way they were portrayed.