Audiovisuel Multimedia International Production (AMIP)

Pictures of the Mediterranean made with bread, oil and wine. In one meal the history, geography, economy, climate, culture and people of the Mediterranean. Close up of threshing floors, threshing floors, mills. Dietary habits, production methods, daily routines together with the natural and built environment make up the cultural body of the most interesting, perhaps, man-made environment in history. A culture that runs as a commonplace even in seemingly different worlds. The Mediterranean emerges in a sea of convergence and meeting without, however, ignoring the dynamics of the different.

Renowned filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, creator of The Man Without a Past (Grand Prix du Jury, 2002 Cannes Film Festival) and acclaimed films such as Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, and Drifting Clouds, is the subject of AKI KAURISMÄKI, the latest release from the Cinema, of Our Time series. The younger member of Finland's most prolific and irreverent filmmaking team, Kaurismäki, together with older brother Mika, virtually invented "The New Finnish Cinema." Since 1981, Kaurismäki has made twenty-two films, many of which are excerpted in this documentary.

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

Part of the Cinéastes de notre temps series.

Jean Rouch's return to Niger, to meet his African friends and the play "Perses" by Aeschylus provide him with the opportunity to relate his Dionysian vision of the world and Songhai mythology. Lam, the Fulani shepherd who is now deceased, once invented a dream: “to be stronger than death”. It is with this strong idea that the journey of this film begins in search of the wonderful stories of the Niger River.

Made for "Cinéma, de notre temps" series. Interview with Georges Franju (1912-1987), a figure of immense importance in the history of French cinema, not primarily for his films (exceptional though many of these are) but for being the co-founder, with Henri Langlois, of the Cinémathèque Française in 1936, France's most famous and important film archive.

A look at the Baath party's project to construct a system of dams.