History is a reconstruction and interpretation of past events and it preserves fluid memory in various forms what French historian Pierre Nora calls sites of memory (les lieux de mémoire). Sites of memory are places, concepts or objects, material or non-material, whose purpose is to represent the past of a certain collective. "The lieux are mixed, hybrid, mutant, bound intimately with life and death, with time and eternity; enveloped in a Mobius strip of the collective and the individual, the sacred and the profane, the immutable and the mobile." (Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, p.19) For the purpose of this game, I have chosen one particular site of memory - monuments. In my selection below are included films depicting monuments that have been erected in various parts of the world throughout the 20th and the 21st century. The list comprises of documentary films about monuments honoring important historical events (The Battle of Mohács, WW I), groups of people (mothers), individuals considered to be national heroes (soldiers who fought in WW I, Stalin and writers) as well as monuments that serve to celebrate religious ceremonies (the ninth day of Novena in Nijmegen). On the occasion of a monument being unveiled, processions and speeches by politicians and religious leaders are held. This public act "performed" by these representatives involves various kinds of "props": wreaths and flowers are laid and national symbols can be seen on flags, ribbons and medals. Memory plays an important role in the formation of the identity of individuals as well as nations. Political and religious leaders select among memories of past events the ones that fit their ideological frameworks and create a coherent narrative - history. Understanding how memory, individual and collective, works and how our leaders can manipulate it, is the first step toward understanding where we have come from (our history) and who we are (our identity). Films, themselves sites of memory, serve to remind us of our past.

Meredith Monk explained her early performance work “16 Millimeter Earrings” which was presented in 1966 as “visual rhyming”. It refers the repetitive movements in her visual and material world of performances which creates a type of poetry with colors, sounds, and textures. Inspired by this term, the program explores the clues of repetitive movement in the films which resonate with life.

Transition, transformation, translation. I approached these platforms quite by intuition. I want to explore what these archives will surprise me. One film from Japanese Animated Film Classics captured my eyes, titled Spring Song, it's a film made by one of a notable animator Ofuji Noburo. This short film is kind of like music video but without sound track, it shows how to sing this lovely song graphically. I found it's quite interesting how this small clip bridges two kinds of medium. On the one hand it refers to a song, a piece of music, on the other hand it is a film, a moving image. I am fascinated by this idea, how film creates a whole new interface from one medium to another, from invisible into visible. It captures the transition of forms, figures, movements, the rhythm of life. It gives abstract idea a material body.

Celebrity cats rule the internet, but who were the cinematic felines that graced the screens of old?

Amy Winehouse died on July 23th 2011, that day I watched a great fire in my neighborhood: a place that creates sculptures was burning. I will never forget the sound and the image of the fire burning everything. It was hypnotizing. Fire creates and destroys: take the burning houses in Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror (1975) and The Sacrifice (1986), the boy who looks a campfire at the end of Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf (2003), the woman who burns to death in Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982), and the entire forest which catches fire in Oliver Laxe's Fire will come (2019). Fire is a destructive and creative element at the same time, it is a constant in films of all times and geographies. A short program about fire and its relations with the human presence: fire as war, as a domestic accident, as a romantic help sign, as a key element to cook food, as a political destabilizer, or as Johnny Cash's song Ring of fire. A weird fire call is the reason for this program. Do you have the matches ready?

From the earliest experiments of the Lumiere brothers and Porter's "Great Train Robbery" to the films of Keaton, Hitchcock, Ozu, and Bong Joon-ho, cinema and railways have a shared history of mechanical ingenuity, global ubiquity, and the obsessive love of devoted fans. Trains, like films, take their passengers on a journey, and have over the years afforded riders and filmgoers a chance to see views otherwise inaccessible through eye-opening travelogues and hair-raising chases. This series of films from five continents shows the ways in which trains are manufactured, used, enjoyed, and, when a particularly cherished line is endangered, even mourned. "Railways For Ever!"

Glimpses of cricket, not just as a competitive sport, but how it has been part of PSAs, newsreel animation, commercials around the world, in the past century.

In the times of the pandemic people on the periphery can experience worsening of their marginalization. Therefore this programm of two short documentary films reminds the history of the secondary position of the Afro-Brazilian community and the European Romani community. The films show the spheres of various daily activities people go through to make a livelihood.

Nous vous proposons ici un voyage kaléidoscopique faussement chronologique dans une matière instable, celle du cinéma d’animation. Un public de 7 à 77 ans pourra ici découvrir un cinéma protéiforme et poreux, un cinéma qui s’affranchit des formes esthétiques et des techniques académiques, du ruban 35mm colorié au feutre au fascinant écran d’épingles d’Alexeieff et Parker. Il semblerait même que ce cinéma se joue des technologies de son temps, redistribuant sans cesse les cartes et infusant ou se laissant infuser par d’autres formes. Il ne sera pas interdit d’y trouver des impuretés et des intrusions ! Il conviendra toutefois d’accompagner la séance via la distribution d’un livret ou en bonimentant la projection. ----- Here we offer you a falsely chronological kaleidoscopic journey through an unstable subject, that of animation. Audiences aged 7 to 77 will be able to discover here a protean and porous cinema, a cinema that breaks free from aesthetic forms and academic techniques, from 35mm tape colored in felt to the fascinating screen of pins of Alexeieff and Parker. It even seems that this cinema is playing with the technologies of its time, endlessly redistributing the cards and infusing or allowing itself to be infused by other forms. It will not be forbidden to find impurities and intrusions! However, the screening should be accompanied by the distribution of a booklet or by pitching it during the screening.

A look back at the joys of communal life.

In these times where most cinemas are closed around the world, this excercise seeks to serve as a reminder of the beautiful and significant value that cinemas have. A glimpse into the work of projectionsits who exist in the shadows and bring the film to life, but also to the inmense dedication of those film lovers who wish to take the film to remote places.

Relying on the power of cinema’s primary language, this program is an attempt to connect with seeing audiences of all ages and from every region of the globe through the symbiosis of visual abstraction and non-verbal sound. Wordless storytelling has always been a strength of the moving image, dating back to the first five decades of filmic expression when visual representation superseded the spoken word as the primary means of unfurling a narrative. Looking well beyond the silent period to these works, which range in date from 1958 to 1978, we find a collection in which artists, amateur filmmakers and documentarians actively reject spoken dialogue as their primary mode of meaning conveyance. Seeking an emotional resonance in a register beyond language, this playful array of films engages the synchronicity of abstract music, sound, color and shapes to convey the very human emotions of anxiety, confinement, joy and wonder. No visual subject is off-limits: illuminated buildings in Bangkok inhabit the same sense of marvel as the whirs and electric lights of a pinball machine; geometric shapes take on surprisingly anthropomorphic characteristics; and the collage techniques that depict a 19th-century battle convey the same pain and erasure as the free-floating "figurillas" from the 6th and 7th centuries. Similar in experimental approach is each work’s avant-garde soundscape (save for the lone silent piece, “Today, 12 August 1968…”) rich with complex compositions and tonal experimentations far outside one’s expectations of a traditional film score. Beyond mere psychedelia and "visual acid for the eyes" (though there's a bit of that, too!), this collection considers stop-motion and hand-drawn animation, clay portraiture, nighttime cityscapes and playful montage as articulations of non-linear narratives unique to the moving image.

Une promenade d'environ 80 ans à travers le monde et le cinéma. Le programme proposé entremêle des portraits de villes documentaires ou poétiques, des travelogues et des films plus officiels qui visent à documenter des événements sociopolitiques et culturels marquants. L'occasion nous est ici donnée de vagabonder à travers l'histoire du cinéma, les époques et les pays en observant les constantes et les variantes dans la manière de représenter et documenter la réalité sociale principalement liée à la vie urbaine.

A range of thoughts and sensations are born on any given day. In this program we will surrender to the discomfort of the everyday, exploring its details, sometimes with humor. Un abanico de pensamientos y sensaciones nacen en un día cualquiera. En este programa nos entregaremos a la incomodidad de lo cotidiano explorando sus detalles, a veces con humor.

A free atmosphere, person, society, or even an object always have a special and its distinctive dynamic. An air of freedom: we feel it or we miss it, we all know exactly what it means but everybody describes it differently. The history of film is definitely a trajectory of freedom of cinematic expression. And, film excels in tangibly describing very concrete and at the same time, even exactly the same moment, totally abstract concepts. That’s why I believe a film or a film program can connect us in understanding freedom, and also offers us some freedom while watching it. Let us think further – this program could definitely come with an antagonist program titled Stillness of Captivity or The Grip of Oppression. Also, this program would most definitely be totally different if I were making it in the context of my immediate knowledge and not in the context of The 2021 FIAF Programming Game. And here, once again, the beauty and freedom of cinema reveals itself, as beyond the (sometimes oppressive?) canon there are not only films but chapters of film history not yet known to us (but many times most important to some other). Is freedom a thing of perspective? Most definitely, and so is film history. Let’s enjoy the freedom it carries and reveals.

Pulsation,movement, transitation.  In this short animation selection you can see different approaches to express the essence of the rhythm.

Venez parcourir un long chemin aux lieux de culte du Mexique au Tibet parmi les foules, chose qui pourrait nous paraître inconcevable aujourd’hui. Le voyage, l'arrivée au lieu, la vénération, l'apaisement, la joie, le temps passé ensemble et la promesse de recommencer l'année d'après...

This program is inspired by James Baldwin’s 1953 essay “Stranger in the Village”, in which he describes his winter holidays in a secluded village in the Swiss Alps. “Naïve racism” of children parading blackface and shouting "Neger! Neger!" at him inform the main point of the essay – which is that Europe still approaches the issue of race with an illusion of innocence, while Americans no longer have the luxury of pretending Baldwin’s a stranger to them. We begin in a European village. In Northamptonshire a black girl is crowned as the Queen of May by her white peers. In Alsace, Senegalese infantryman are goofing around with white officers. These idyllic images were produced, respectively, by the British Colonial Film Unit and the French army at times when both these colonial powers needed fresh recruit (1943 and 1918). We conclude this part with a reality check – a story of Australian indigenous war veterans returning from service. The second part takes us to the USA in 1944, where segregated colleges are supposedly at the forefront of both “black progress” and the war effort. Then we peek behind the iron curtain to see how Polish communist propaganda trying to leverage the same idea of “black progress”, while inadvertently doubling down on stereotypes about Africa. We conclude with a short by Skip Norman – an African-American filmmaker working in Germany – who used Amiri Baraka’s play to explore the mythologies of racism, looking for its roots in sexual repression (bringing to mind another Baldwin masterpiece -- "Going to Meet the Man").

Le programme est à considérer comme une proposition de voyage dans le regard du cinéma coloniale du XX siècle. Un cinéma souvent exotique qui a placé les femmes au centre de l'écran pour dépeindre les «autres» comme une présence menaçante ou apprivoisée, comme dans les deux premiers titres. Dans le troisième titre on voit la tentative de démasquer et de déconstruire ce regard colonial. Pour enfin arriver à un regard empathique dans le quatrième film, qui rend hommage à un peuple consideré "autre" par excellence. Alors que dans le dernier film le regard est inversé: ce sont les jeunes filles algériennes qui parlent d'elles-mêmes et de leur rôle dans la société à la première personne.

Music and film link together in various ways. Film has captured music in all of its varied forms: everything from unpolished documentary footage, film scenes to technical presentations of recording sessions. Animation has offered different ways to visualize music particularly well, but also the fluid limbs of jazz legend James Berry. Like film, music expresses identity of nations and cultures effortlessly, crossing borders without having to queue at the customs office for hours. Fado singers from Portugal and the Carlos Gardel of Finnish tango, Olavi Virta both channel passion in their own way, as does the Hungarian rock band with their British pop infused folk song. Whether it is a dusty small town road in Romanian village or a glamorous gathering in Paris, music instantly communicates about heritage.

Du film documentaire des Archives de Monaco ou du Canada jusqu'au film expérimental Ephemeral Blue, en passant par Pas à deux, qu'on soit triste ou gai, heureux ou malheureux, la danse est parmi nous. En attendant le monde d'après, continuons à aimer la danse.

Cette programmation a pour thème « La jeunesse des années 1960 » et est constitué majoritairement de documentaires. A travers ces films nous pouvons voir les contrastes de vies entres différents jeunes à travers le monde. Les films offrent des témoignages forts, « El dia de la boda » de Alfonso Munoz et Gaston Martinez, film à caractère anthropologique, nous immerge dans les noces d’un jeune couple de la communauté Nahua. « Elles » d’Ahmed Lallem se fait porte-parole des revendications des femmes en Algérie. « It Goes On and On » de Cheryl Hunter (étudiante à la UCLA) rompt le silence sur la sororité et le mal être des étudiants.

Retrouvez dans ce corpus non exhaustif, des femmes et des hommes au travail mais aussi des moments collectifs plus légers comme la fête des Catherinettes aux Usines Lumières en 1951. L’occasion d’un voyage dans le temps vers des métiers et des gestes parfois oubliés. Ce programme de films professionnels comme amateurs fait écho au projet Interreg Entre2prises porté par la Cinémathèque depuis un an et qui explore les archives audiovisuelles de l’industrie.

Cette séance regroupe films primitif, d’actualités, éducatif, documentaire et rushes réalisés entre 1897 et 1950, et présente le monde du travail au féminin. Les femmes effectuent tous types de métiers, des métiers traditionnels dans le domaine de l’agriculture et de l’artisanat, mais aussi des métiers attribués habituellement aux hommes, notamment pendant la guerre, ou encore des métiers périodiquement interdits aux femmes. A l’exception d’un exemple sonorisé dans le cadre de sa restauration, le programme est muet.

Having exchanged marriage vows with my wife just months before the pandemic hit and having attended many of the crowded weddings of my friends, colleagues, and loved ones before then, the marital ceremony as we know it has come to personally symbolize a sense of normalcy. While the specific customs vary from culture to culture, its fundamental concept as a festive gathering of loved ones witnessing the joining of two families is a tradition shared by billions around the world. It is but one of the many customs that have been negatively impacted by the current state of the world. But life goes on. This programme aims to showcase a selection of footage of wedding ceremonies recorded throughout the decades, hopefully reminding us that no matter how dire the world may seem now, the wedding and all its characteristics (the restlessness of the bride and groom, the seemingly neverending posing for photographs, the cheery marching procession of guests, etc) will never die.

We love them or hate them. They are silent, noisy or soothing, in color or in black and white, animated or with actors, serious or playful. They include various shots, or just a few. They make us dream, desire or provoke criticism. Retrospectively, they are potentially racial and gender biased. Their songs and punchlines can get stuck in our heads. They have adopted the moving images right from the start and have conquered every screen. They have permitted to directors and animators to make ends meet or to get noticed. They have a sole and unique purpose: to promote and sell! Ladies and gentlemen: 20th century advertisements, publicités, reklame, publicidades around the world.

No narration, just observation, and music. A few professional performers here and there, but mainly just ordinary, if gifted, people, playing and listening to music. COUNTRY JAZZ; a documentary about a jazz festival in the small town of Dubbo, Australia; plays out like a fast version of the influential documentary about Woodstock from the year before: aerial shots and close-ups, rehearsals and performances, snapshots of the audience listening, dancing, bathing. A beautiful gem, directed by Bob Kingsbury. STREET MUSIC is a near feature length direct cinema exposé of street performances from all over the United States, shot and directed by future Emmy winner Nick Doob – a D.A. Pennebaker associate who in the same year worked as a cinematographer on Town Bloody Hall and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Look out for Gene Palma, in a performance reminiscent of his short scene in Taxi Driver. HELA HEDEMORA SJUNGER OCH SPELAR ("All of Hedemora sings and plays") is the odd choice here, but I wanted to include something from my home country Sweden, and this montage of people in the small town of Hedemora playing all kinds of music follows in the same vein as the other two films. Director Roland Engvall, an amateur filmmaker, has shot/directed hundreds of short documentaries. If nothing else, a great document on 80s fashion in the Swedish countryside.

Looking at the life’s of others was one of the motivations behind cinema’s initial success and probably the main reason for its longstanding popularity. Even in lockdown (or even more so), our nature of incorrigible peeping toms drags us to watch for our humanity in the fragments of any life (real or imaginary) projected or displayed on a screen. Following Jean-Luc Godard’s famous bashing of any categorical definitions of fiction and documentary films (“All great fiction films tend towards documentary, just as all great documentaries tend toward fiction”), this program proposes a journey through an imaginary person’s life through disparate films (either factual or fictional) and regardless of any geographic or temporal limitations. Seen together and in a specific order, they form a kind of narrative arch that illustrate what’s more general and invariable in any human life (birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death). But here (by cinema´s powers to evoke the universal through the singular) each of these stages is made particular, detailed and picturesque.

Through newsreels, documentaries and commercials, this program zooms into beer production, prohibition, promotion and consumption; as well as into its social and political function. The selection starts with two humorous early silent miniatures featuring a contagiously happy beer drinker and a thirsty corpse who sneaks out of the coffin in a chase for few sips. The next two films make a twist to more serious topics such as the Prohibition Law in USA and the beer tax announcement, however the cheerful mood comes back shortly with a reportage on a contest between goats that compete for a beer brand award. Beer brewing is represented by a technical documentary about a brewing plant installed on the board of a ship which was supplying British servicemen in the Far East with the spirit rising liquid. The following four pieces provide examples on different approaches in been advertising throughout different periods and cultures: from the detailed overview on production and consumption of the Bulgarian historical beer brand Shumensko pivo to music based, stop-motion and drawn animation commercials. Joyful newsreels provide insights to beer consumption habits on Polish streets and at a Brasilian beer festival, just before the program wrap up – a Finnish documentary about two friends who enjoy bar hopping around twelve beer pubs in central Turku in order to experience the lush folk culture of beer drinking.

During the pandemic, one of the things I missed most was being able to see the sea and to breathe its smell. This short programme - entitled "Mi manca il profumo del mare/I miss the smell of the sea" - is dedicated to the sea. When you are born to the sea, if you cannot experience it for a long time, you develop a feeling of lack. Those who, like me, come from the sea, will be able to understand the feeling of missing one of the five elements: water.

The challenging times we are living in leave many of us feeling blue. However, while the color blue is associated with a low feeling in the expression “I’m feeling blue,” it has many different meanings, shades and facets. For instance, blue is linked to the cold, the sky and the sea, to distance and infinity, to nobility (blue blood) and to excellence, distinction and high performance. It is also said to have a calming and pleasant effect. So – let’s take a journey through silent cinema with the power of the color blue! And feel the blue tints and tones! Because, as we will see, blue in silent cinema has a lot to offer – water, the sea, winter and ice, the night (of course!) and being outdoors. It also appears as THE object of desire that, in some cases, can even bring love, fortune and happiness?! The latter is true from a cinéaste's perspective, for sure, as even cinema itself receives a blue shade. And as, finally, there is nothing more beautiful than the combination of a blue tone with a pink tint. And keep in mind, blue also only makes sense (visually and emotionally) in combination, contrast and alternation with other colors, including black and white.

De la fiction burlesque Robinet boxeur (Luigi Maggi, 1913) à Combat de boxe, œuvre expérimentale réalisée par Charles Dekeukeleire en 1927, la représentation de la boxe au cinéma traverse aussi bien les genres que les époques et les territoires. Les films de cette programmation mettent en scène des anonymes comme des grands noms de la boxe, tels les poids lourds Joe Louis et Max Schmeling, qui livrent en 1936 un combat mémorable dont la Library and Archives Canada a conservé la trace. Ils se déroulent tantôt devant une foule captivée, avide de divertissement, tantôt dans l’intimité d’une rivière thaïlandaise, à l’ombre des regards, et suivent les athlètes depuis leur entraînement quotidien jusque sur le ring. Un montage rapide met parfois en valeur la tension présidant à un affrontement tandis qu’ailleurs, l’usage du ralenti insiste au contraire sur la précision ou la beauté chorégraphique d’un geste. La boxe est enfin un lieu d’expression privilégié des minorités, qui inversent alors les rapports de force habituels, à l’image des femmes immortalisées par Thomas A. Edison dans Gordon Sisters Boxing (1901), démontrant que la force n’est pas l’apanage des hommes.

You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more? —The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

This selection of films explores the complex, dependent, and intimate relations between humans and creatures of the deep. Whether fishing for entertainment, sustenance, commerce, or sheer pride, people from around the world have engaged in this exploit of the waters. The program voyages through the varying ways that humans seek, interact with, portray, or utilize these aquatic beings. A fishing competition, a whaling expedition, a portrait of coastal life, a cooking companion, a tranquil day of angling—some of the works appear barbaric, while others are eerily dreamlike or comically playful. These documentary and fictional images encourage us to ask ourselves, why does this fascination with fish and fishing exist? Is it just the thrill of the chase, necessity, greed, or something else? What role does the water-based individual play in each of the narratives, different cultures, or singular lives? Why do we seek to destroy the things we cherish—the things of scintillating and organic beauty and allure? Perhaps we are driven by the illusion of purpose, or maybe we just do not know any other way.

Since the early years of cinema, travelogues were important and much favored parts of film programs. They took the armchair travelers to most diverse parts of the world while shaping a particular “tourist gaze” which structured the world according to the naturalized categories of modern, exotic, and colonial. Travelogues were not only produced for commercial distribution, they were also made by amateurs and state officials. The program presents a range of travel films from the pre-WWII world to foreground multiple desires embedded in them – those of exploring and entertaining, mapping and registering, conquering and domesticating. The films in this selection demonstrate diverse approaches to representing space and expose a deep entanglement of cinema and colonialism. The image decay exposes the materiality of the medium and the transient nature of memory. With the pandemic challenge to our customary mobility, the program encourages us to revisit the desires of the early film publics for cinematic travels, the power of mediated image to structure the world, and our own perception of space and travel.

Green Monster is an exploration of people’s changing relationship with their environment and the impact this has had on climate change and land use. It’s a glimpse into the various ways filmmakers have explored the connection between peoples’ way of life and their environment, and how these relationships have transformed over time. I was inspired by the British artist John Akomfrah’s Purple, a six-channel archive video installation focusing on the threat of climate change, exhibited at the Barbican in 2018. While selecting the archive film material, Akomfrah noticed that no matter what era or context of film there were key visual motifs present that add up to a history of the human impact on our shared environments. Akomfrah named this the ‘green monster’, adding a contemporary layer to overfamiliar footage of industrialisation, technology advancement and over-consumption.

Moving image and sound shall be a form of non-verbal communications, representing a conceptual actuality and complexity in life. In ancient Chinese philosophical discourses, realising the ‘decree’ and ‘fate’ means knowing one’s own position, by learning as much as you can the profound truth of all things in the universe, and understanding as deep as you can the nature of all beings. So as to establish and control one’s own ‘destiny’ by knowing it’s position and what ought to be done in life. The selected shorts are seemingly the realisation of this process, through their unconventional and unique storytelling, no matter how the endings are. And the sequence itself is a course of human life. There is not necessarily an answer, yet what the protagonists encounter in life, and how they treat themselves in relation with the environment are universal, regardless of the language and culture.

The invention of cinema changed the way of looking at and conceiving reality in the 20th century: an incredible magical and story-telling tool, capable of manipulating the world, deforming it in an ironic, surreal, grotesque and dreamlike way. The real was no longer based on the principles of verisimilitude or coherence but on those of escape towards a poetic, magical and suggestive universe. It was more like a daydream, a stunning surprise, a phantasmagoria. Even when the succession of images were concatenated in a story, the absence of precise rules for the construction of the discourse made the narrative anarchic and discontinuous. Some sequences of the silent films of that era, despite the apparent fairytale and childlike simplicity, lull an essential metaphorical depth. This program celebrates the will of the silent cinema to strike the viewer's eye, his attention and his imagination, claiming his nature as an art for the masses.

In times of social distancing and lockdowns this programme tries to explore an international real and cinematic past of mass events and public spaces with all their random or intended encounters, the good ones as well as the bad ones, now only found on and possible in film.

The first idea for the thematic programme came when i recalled The Idea, one of the most important political films that i watched. It is the only film made by the Bohemian animation film director Berthold Bartosch, who was a collaborator of Lotte Reiniger and Paul Wegener. Based on woodcuts by Frans Masereel, with music by Arthur Honegger, Bartosch's only surviving film was made single-handely in Paris between 1930 and 1932. Almost 45000 frames were animated on four different levels simultaneously, often with as many as 18 superimpositions made in the camera. I hope i am not breaking the rules of the game, as no FIAF related institution uploaded the film, but AFCA (https://www.afca.asso.fr/ressources/patrimoine/Bartosch) and CNC are in charge for the distribution of the restored 35mm film print. The programme pays hommage also to the early suffragettes fight, the anarchists fight against fascism in Barcelona and the Italian partisans fight against nazism. A special gem in the programme is Santiago Alvarez documentary on the struggle against racial segregation in the USA. The words of the song NOW refers to the urgent need of fighting with more efficient methods to obtain equality of civil rights for the Black American citizens.

Charlie Caplin released his heart-warming first feature film “The Kid” 100 years ago in 1921. Based on the film’s anniversary this programme goes back in time and takes a look at the world in 1921. Starting with a Chaplin competition in Australia it travels to India with Prince Edward, shows the Bavarian countryside and the picturesque landscapes of Belgium and Canada in the 20th century, follows an expedition to Indonesia and finally arrives at an ordinary American home. It shows, that while some things may change dramatically, others stay the same – even in times of a pandemic.

Ouvrons l’album aux images. Fragments, bribes, souvenirs…, une vie se dessine. Qui est-elle ? … Nous ne le saurons pas vraiment… Pour ce jeu, j’ai eu envie d’assembler des pièces, de fabriquer une histoire intime aux chaînons manquants. A travers des films de familles, amateurs, documentaires, fictions ou publicités, à vous d’écrire maintenant cette vie imaginaire, le portrait en pointillés d’une femme.

Since the Lumiere Brothers first filmed workers leaving a factory, the world of work has been a popular subject for filmmakers. As the nature of work continues to evolve and our relationship to work changes, this programme looks at how film has captured the lost traditions of working lives, the innovation and rhythms of the factory floor, and the idealistic promises of meaningful work and leisure for all. Featuring work from the Mutoscope and Biograph Company, Indian cinema pioneer Bimal Roy, and cinematographer Jack Cardiff amongst others, the films are often beautifully crafted and shot through with a sense of camaraderie and humanity.

On se fait beau, on se prépare pour aller à la fête . Là les manèges, les automates, la foule... la tête se met à tourner, on n'est plus très sûr de ce que l'on voit, les images se diffractent et on entre dans un grand cercle, celui de la danse mais aussi celui de la vie. Une balle qui s'échappe, la lune qui joue des tours et la danse qui tourne, tourne, jusqu'au bout de la nuit.

This program celebrates Latin American culture through films that address one of its most striking aspects: the music. This selection presents unique records of the musical richness of different countries in Latin America, such as Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. The music produced in these places has its own unique characteristics, and show the diversity and freedom of creation. Whether folk, traditional or popular, each genre express itself with the sonority of the culture it belongs, through presentations or popular festivities. We will see the record of a performance of Brazilian samba singers and musicians like Clara Nunes and Nelson Cavaquinho at the legendary Teatro Opinião, in Rio de Janeiro; the evocation of the indigenous musical past of the Ecuadorian province of Pichincha from Quechua mythology point of view and the carnival in Tepoztlán, Morelos, in Mexico. Moving to the video format we will present a television record of the rock band Serú Girán, which has become a cultural reference against the Argentine dictatorship; and, to finish the program, the rise of the punk movement during the dictatorship in Chile from the impressions of a group of teenagers. Although all works can be categorized as documentaries, these films, made in different periods and using different formats (film and video), approach the context in which this music was created in diverse ways, enabling the understanding of social and historical aspects and the cultural values of each country. Music is part of the Latin American identity and its history can be told through it: embark on this journey with eyes and ears wide open.

This program looks at the views of different authors on love expressions in the early 20th century. These first moving images about this matter are very important not only because of their technical and conceptual creativity, but also because they started shaping present views (and stereotypes) of our ways we relate to the other in the present. Most of the films produced during this period have a predominant, romantic conception of love, filmed from a male driven perspective. This program intends to reflect on the enormous value of these images in terms of the visual representation of a conservative society, but also to open a conversation about what the images themselves hide or avoid to tell, demanding for a more diverse portrayal of what we have been as a society.

La programmation que je vous propose est directement liée à l’une de mes missions au Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée (CNC) : mener des actions de médiation au cinéma auprès de maisons de retraite/EHPADs, à partir de films du patrimoine aidés par le CNC. Cette programmation est plutôt un essai de programmation car je viens tout juste de commencer à construire ce projet de médiation et je n’ai pas encore pu intervenir en maisons de retraite en raison de la crise du COVID 19. Un thème conducteur m’est toutefois rapidement venu en tête : l’idée de « l’évasion » au sens propre comme figuré, dans le temps, l’espace et le rêve… Les maisons de retraite étant souvent perçues comme un milieu fermé et enfermant, il m’a donc semblé intéressant de proposer des films qui pourraient faire voyager et explorer le lointain voire l'inatteignable pour ce public, temporellement et spatialement; faire découvrir ou redécouvrir par le cinéma des lieux et des époques qu’ils ont pu ou n’ont pas pu visiter ou connaitre au cours de leur vie; susciter le rêve et l’imaginaire et de le partager ensemble, le temps d’une séance/ atelier… Ces films issus des collections du CNC, des Cinémathèques de Savoie et de l'Ain, de Toulouse, de la Cinémathèque Suisse, du Irish Film Institute, et de la Filmoteca de Catalunya, présentent diverses formes d’évasion : évasion par le rêve et l’imagination, évasion par les effets des rayons du soleil, évasion gustative et humoristique, évasion sous forme de vacances à la mer, évasion sensorielle, évasion à travers une belle rencontre, et plus généralement évasion dans le temps avec des images d’archives d’une autre époque, évasion dans différents espaces du monde, voire sur d’autres planètes, et évasion dans l’espace infini de l’imagination. La mise en œuvre concrète d’une telle programmation, impliquerait de construire et de mener une activité ludique autours du film en amont de la projection et un débrief interactif après la projection.

From sugar beet to dried fruits. A timeless journey from black and white sugar beet processing, sugar cane harvesting and male mateship through colorful maple tree sapping and sweet festivities in the snow and frozen delights straight into raisin future ruled by women. Sugar – to many a friend but just the same to many a foe. As explained in Sugar it’s only a bit of water, carbon dioxide and sunlight. And a secret only nature holds plus some industrial processing. The Cane Cutters from Australia are humble, hard-working men but if you cut cane with a man you’ll soon find out what‘s he like. A good mate’s a good mate and that’s that. It’s Maple Sugar Time in Canada and sugaring-off parties celebrate the first batch of the new year. The winter is behind and summer is ahead. You can’t go wrong mixing liquid sugar with milk and cream and freezing it because when summer comes, it’s All About Ice Cream. It’s on record that many of famous New Zealand athletes include ice cream in their diet. Whether they are training or not. But what does the future hold? A Hundred-odd Years from Now? Forget Men. Raisins are the real deal.

Movement and an anthropocentric approach are at the origin of cinema. So, from science to sport, this program focuses on physicality and sensuality of bodies in motion, which were object of fascination to early films viewers and even before, in pre-cinema experiences. The scientific approach is headed by Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographic films. Those captivating images of naked men walking and jumping, with their harmonious constitutions, are conjured up by medical films about motion difficulties in patients with different diseases. Non-normative bodies and functional diversity also fit into the poetics of body. Back to forerunners of the Cinematographe, the lonely voyeurs of Edison's kinetoscope took pleasure in looking at Sandow’s bulging muscles. For its part, the Pathé flipbook Lutteurs introduces hand-to-hand combat (or is it a dance?), which we also find in one of the first sumo matches filmed in Japan and in Sport's hypnotic slow-motion boxing lessons. As in Sport fragments, which shows a female boxer, instruction in women’s self-defense is the subject of Hints to the Ladies on Jiu-Jitsu (“it behoves every girl today to be able to protect herself”), an unusual short film loaded with queer ambiguity. Whereas in Sport and Hints to the Ladies on Jiu-Jitsu women are empowered through sport, The Key to Beauty encourages them to stay in shape in order to fit the standards of feminine beauty (“why be fat if proper exercising will make you thin? ”). Les Six soeurs Dainef terrific show could be a resounding answer: why be thin if you can be chubby and amazingly flexible and strong? The frenetic rhythm of the Dainef sisters contrasts with the poetic magnetism of images at the beginning of Pelota Vasca. The physicality of vigorous bodies is devoured by the degradation of film footage. Is there a better metaphor to depict body vulnerability over time? But let's go for a happier end, because young people who train and flirt at Muscle Beach are unaware of that vulnerability. Joseph Strick’s short is a beautiful and sensual film in which bodybuilding is mixed with summer laziness, children's games and curious glances. A tribute to the body, but also to socializing and touching each other, those simple pleasures we miss so much in times of pandemic...

C'est en découvrant la publicité d'Huilor que l'idée de ce programme est devenue une évidence. Traquer les images du livre à travers les collections en ligne des affiliés m'a permis de voyager dans bien des pays et des époques, de me glisser d'une foire à un atelier, d'une chambre à coucher à un bibliobus. Vous verrez: le livre est partout! Films publicitaires, documentaires, propagande, fictions, films professionnels ou amateurs: le livre inspire et nous met aussi dans bien des états. Vous jetez un oeil?

This program celebrates early forays into cinematic animation, offering a transnational sampling of different techniques (e.g., stop-motion, cutout, hand drawing), influences, and generic and tonal approaches used during the silent film era. Although presented in chronological order, I’m not suggesting any sort of formalized aesthetic or technical evolution. Interspersing advertisements and trick films, narrative storytelling and abstract experiments, educational initiatives and political cartoons, the selected films--made by the well-known, the less familiar, and the unidentified--are meant to be appreciated collectively as an impression of early cinematic animation at both the local and global level. Film animation, as we know it today, is at once bound up in the very history of cinematographic movement and constituted its own emerging artistic and technical practice during the industry’s first two decades. Here are films that rejoice in their own constructedness and, in different ways, present the unpresentable by transcending the limits of the photographic image.

L’Institut Jean Vigo possède dans ses collections un film 16mm amateur, L’exode d’un peuple, avec des images rares de la « retirada », l’exode des républicains espagnols. Du 28 janvier au 13 février 1939, ce sont 475 000 personnes qui passent la frontière française, en particulier au col du Perthus. Pour mettre ce film en perspective, je vous propose un programme autour de la guerre civile espagnole uniquement constitué de films amateurs ou professionnels réalisés à l’époque. Tout d’abord trois films avec des images de guerre issus de l’Academy Film Archive, le la Cinemateca Portuguesa et de la Filmoteca de Catalunya. Suivent deux films sur la présence étrangère dans les rangs républicains issu de la Filmoteca Valenciana et la Filmoteca de Catalunya. Vient ensuite le film de l’Institut jean Vigo sur l’exode de républicain. Enfin, le programme se termine par un film issu de la Cineteca Nacional de Mexico sur l’accueil des enfants de républicains par le Mexique.

It's wheels on reels with this selection of cycling films, which begins with a tour through the the history, mechanics, and responsibilities of riding. We then look at the lifetime of delights bikes can bring, from childhood exploration through sports and stunts. Enjoy the ride, but remember: "you have a duty to the world when you ride on your bike."

Either you decide to follow unsolicited advice or you don't, here is a compendium that just might get you through this year (or is it era?). Cigarettes help with stress, but also do sports, and in this program they are not mutually exclusive. Don't let people tell you you're unfit for anything you'll find, make up your own mind. And remember that your personal hygiene today will influence your future tomorrow. Don't worry, here you won't find wellness gurus but you will discover practical information on how to have fun, keep clean, or maintain viruses afar. And other essential survival skills are also included: knowing how to recognize potentially deadly animals, and potentially deadlier political regimes. In the end, a dream of equality and longed freedom. And one last cigarette puff to finish the evening. I hope you find pleasure in this array of unsolicited guidance.

On November 10th 1909, one of the first cinemas of Moscow opened and today, after a long period without any activity, it has re-opened again with its original appearance and architecture. This cinema is a symbol of endurance of film culture over a 112-year period and it can be celebrated with an imaginary program which includes the best of the international film productions of the time, together with some contemporary newsreels. This selection of titles is not random, but has been made according to what we know of the Russian distribution business of that period, that means the heavy presence of French and Italian films released by specific foreign companies, the genres that were offered to the audience, running times and number of films for every screening and so on.

How revealing can be early cinema about the diverse bodies and identities that faced with courage (and with no other choice) the heights of industrialization during the first decades of 20th century. In the light of Feminist Film History and free access of digital archive material, it is possible for us now to make cinematographic contact with women of different countries, and not only learn from their work experiences, but also to incorporate them into the collective demands of gender justice that are transforming the world we live in. In this regard, we encounter Argentinian factory employees that liberate their bodies in the public space by dancing on it; French young girls growing up in the middle of domestic labor and the manufacture of war materials; Mexican women active and visible in the photographic business; or Edison's workers whose faces remain hidden from the camera. Reunited, they invite us to think about how our contemporary societies have changed (or not) and how gender is still an element of importance for understanding the dynamics and transformations of our work spaces.

Television as a media term is currently dissolving. Former cinema rival faces a similar re-evaluation as cinemas faced at the time of the advent of television. Vilem Flusser, Shirley Clarke or Rene Berger saw television as early as in the 1960s as an instrument of anti-communication and imperative, which forgets to engage in dialogue with the viewer, but also as a medium whose potential has never been fully realized. Can television archeology suddenly become a cinema programme? Can experimental television works by Chris Marker, Jean Renoir, Peter Greenaway and other authors be discovered for the film viewer? The following selection of short films includes works that revise television technology and its beginnings as a playful tool that stood at the birth of video art and multimedia, as a source of ontological certainty of man, as well as a powerful ideological tool that must be subjected to subversion of the audience and auteurs. However, this kind of subversion has always found it very difficult to gain space in television broadcasting. NOTE: For the first pioneering multimedia work by Ludwig Hirschweld-Mack, please scroll down at the website as there is no direct link for the "Cross-Play."

The current COVID-19 pandemic outbreak is a war to mankind not too different from the conventional warfare among troops in the early 20th century. This is all the more true from the point of view of the people on the other side of the “barricade”, namely doctors, nurses and patients, authentic unknown heroes on the “battlefield”. In the silent period of cinema, a significant number of newsreels focused on the plain portrayal of hospitals and on the promotion of new health services. Within this category, we find the most classical non-fiction films, where the visits of aristocrats, politicians or officers were shown at length to the detriment of an honest depiction of pain and illness, which was almost always missing. Then, particularly during the first world war and maybe not too much on purpose, newsreels and scientific footage showed what violence and death actually meant, and those images are still a shocking lesson for us all. Some of these harrowing pictures have been rediscovered quite recently and they will not fail in appalling the audiences, not for the footage itself, but for the sense of unfairness and cruelty they convey. All this would be too unbearable, and so some useful suggestions on how to protect ourselves from a “non-specific” pneumonia virus (echoing the current war on the virus) and the fact that it is still possible to laugh about doctors, nurses and patients (and together with them) will close the program, leaving us on a high note and, possibly, with a little more hope for the future.

Famously described by Martin Scorsese as "the church of the 20th century", where the masses flock to worship a veritable pantheon of (screen) gods, the cinema has served as a key source of information and entertainment, as a valuable propaganda tool, and as a major place of social interaction - on physical, emotional and intellectual levels - for 125 years. Until only recently, the cinema has been a constant fixture in the lives of human beings of all ages, races, genders and creeds, and has endured even throughout humankind's darkest hours in the past (including two world wars). This programme brings together 14 short films and extracts of various forms and genres in a collective celebration of the dispositif cinema and the act of cinema-going. The films are presented below in chronological order, but viewers are welcome to dip in and out at any point they like. When the inept eponymous character of "Arthème opérateur" (played by Ernst Servaes, who also directs) answers a job ad for a cinema projectionist, chaos ensues. In "Al cinematografo, guardate... e non toccate" (At the Cinema Show), a production of the Turin-based Itala company, it is this time not the projectionist but a licentious audience member who wreaks havoc in the movie theatre. The German propaganda film "Das Kino als Berater" from animation legend Julius Pinschewer presents an advertisement for war bonds as a film-within-a-film. "Running a Cinema", from the British "Memoirs of Miffy" cartoon series, deftly sends up a typical cinema programme of the time. The Finnish educational film "Elokuvateatteri ennen ja nyt" (A Movie Theatre Before And Now) blends documentary and fiction techniques to inform on fire-safety measures at a (then) state-of-the-art cinema. In "Ein Parkett der Prominenten", a cavalcade of Hollywood stars can be seen parading before the camera at the gala premiere of Frank Lloyd's Academy Award-winning biopic "The Divine Lady". "Midt i Byens Hjerte" (At the Heart of the City) depicts the construction of the Palladium cinema in Denmark's capital Copenhagen. Out-take footage from a wartime American newsreel shows a mobile cinema used for entertaining American troops on the front lines being set up. The educational film "Let's Go To The Movies" presents a compact history of the American motion picture industry. Confectionery has been a common fixture of the cinema-going experience since time immemorial, as the silent advertisement for the Lyceum Cinema in Dumfries, Scotland, illustrates. A Hungarian newsreel item from March 1960 humorously demonstrates how not to behave at a cinema screening. A Thai news report from 1st October 1967 documents the introduction of automatic ticket dispensers at local cinemas. Another newsreel extract reports on the re-opening of the refurbished cinema at the Fluminense Federal University in Brazil in 1974. Finally, the short Mexican documentary "Cine Móvil México" chronicles an ambitious mobile cinema project by the Cineteca Nacional to bring the wonder of cinema to the remotest parts of the country.

Children habe been popular "objects" for cameras ever since the beginning of cinema. They appear early in Home Movies, are seen in dramas and comedies as famous child actors or are focused on in educational or political documentaries. One might say that there is a natural affinity between children and cinema. Their (apparent) authenticity conveys truthfulness and charms the spectators. At the same time, they are the target of educational programs that put an end to their genuineness. The eleven films chosen for this programme combine these elements and include Home Movies, fiction films as well as documentaries from 1914 to 1969.

From trade union general strikes, to May Day marches, student revolts, queer uprisings, and anarchist riots this program looks at various figures of protest. Cinema and the media (much of the conserved footage are official newsreels) followed and recorded these events, creating an ever-growing archive of socio-political contestation that spans across the history of moving images. In the current global context and after months of multiple and simultaneous uprisings sparking all over the planet, looking back at these images places our bodies today in the continuity of those that lead similar fights before us.

Over the last few weeks, many of us football (soccer) fans have been deprived of football games on television (in the stadium). However, FIAF archives are full of great films about the Beautiful Game. Here's below a programme of films about football. Match reports from all around the world (going back to the start of the last century), documentaries and short fiction about the game, interspersed with a few football-related adverts.