Serge Toubiana

A documentary on 'La Belle et le Bête' featuring interviews with author Dominique Marny, professor David Gullentops from University of Bruxelles, Serge Toubiana (Cinematheque française), and Ellen Schafer (SNC/M6 Group), amongst others.

In 1914, the Czech architect Jan Letzel designed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima Center for the World Expo, which has turned into ruins after the atomic bombing in August 1945. “Atomic Dome” – all that remains of the destroyed palace of the exhibition – has become part of the Hiroshima memorial. In 2007, French sculptor, painter and film director Jean-Gabriel Périot assembled this cinematic collage from hundreds of multi-format, color and black and white photographs of different years’ of “Genbaku Dome”.

7.4/10

A 2003 documentary by Serge Toubiana and Sonia Buchman that catches up with the cast and location of Maurice Pialat's 'Passe ton bac d'abord'.

A short documentary about the making of Chaplin's 'Limelight'.

6.9/10

A short documentary about the making of The Great Dictator.

7.5/10

In 1928, as the talkies threw the film industry and film language into turmoil, Chaplin decided that his Tramp character would not be heard. City Lights would not be a talking picture, but it would have a soundtrack. Chaplin personally composed a musical score and sound effects for the picture. With Peter Lord, the famous co-creator of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, we see how Chaplin became the king of slapstick comedy and the superstar of the movies.

7.1/10

A teenage girl helps investigators reconstruct her mother's (Isabelle Renauld) murder.

6.3/10

Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Details of the crime and of the trial that followed are told from varied perspectives, including the written confession of Pierre himself, and form a rich and complex narrative that interrogates the concepts of “truth” and “history”.

7.2/10

Reel 16 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.