The original image or the first image. That of the first film, that of all the promises. The matrix image announcing all those to come. The history of cinema is full of legendary first movies, master strokes rather than test shots. There is a lot to be learned from the early plants of estrean directors who later became great filmmakers.

Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.

Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.

In eight films, Jacques Audiard has renewed French cinema, without alienating either the critics or the success. It is only at the age of 42 that he starts directing, after having been an editor and a scriptwriter. In 1994, he directed his first film, "Regarde les hommes tomber", whose conflicting shooting was an ordeal for this misanthropic beginner. It was with "Sur mes lèvres", in 2001, that he forged his cinematographic language: contained lyricism, deliberate imperfection of images, ellipses plunging the audience into a maelstrom of sensations. With each of his films, Jacques Audiard intends to renew himself, at the cost of challenges and doubts always more vivid.

In eight films, Jacques Audiard has renewed French cinema, without alienating either the critics or the success. It is only at the age of 42 that he starts directing, after having been an editor and a scriptwriter. In 1994, he directed his first film, "Regarde les hommes tomber", whose conflicting shooting was an ordeal for this misanthropic beginner. It was with "Sur mes lèvres", in 2001, that he forged his cinematographic language: contained lyricism, deliberate imperfection of images, ellipses plunging the audience into a maelstrom of sensations. With each of his films, Jacques Audiard intends to renew himself, at the cost of challenges and doubts always more vivid.

In eight films, Jacques Audiard has renewed French cinema, without alienating either the critics or the success. It is only at the age of 42 that he starts directing, after having been an editor and a scriptwriter. In 1994, he directed his first film, "Regarde les hommes tomber", whose conflicting shooting was an ordeal for this misanthropic beginner. It was with "Sur mes lèvres", in 2001, that he forged his cinematographic language: contained lyricism, deliberate imperfection of images, ellipses plunging the audience into a maelstrom of sensations. With each of his films, Jacques Audiard intends to renew himself, at the cost of challenges and doubts always more vivid.

In the Russian Empire of the 1910s, a group of visionary painters revolutionized the aesthetic norms of their time and opted for radical abstraction. In the years between the seizure of power by the Russian Bolsheviks and Stalinism in the 1930s, the avant-gardists developed a new form of art that ushered in modernism.

In the Russian Empire of the 1910s, a group of visionary painters revolutionized the aesthetic norms of their time and opted for radical abstraction. In the years between the seizure of power by the Russian Bolsheviks and Stalinism in the 1930s, the avant-gardists developed a new form of art that ushered in modernism.

A short featurette on "Cesar and Rosalie"

A pioneering post-war female film director, an instigator of the New Wave who was honored by Hollywood in her own lifetime, Agnès Varda has become a source of inspiration for a whole new generation of young filmmakers. With movies like Cléo de 5 à 7, Le Bonheur, Sans toit ni loi, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, she created a quirky, open to the world, sensitive to the disenfranchised, often silly body of work. Always one finger on the pulse, she shook everything up, including cinema itself which she refused to constrict to pure fiction or long-form films.